BRA/? 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


"  MAKERS   OF  AMERICA" 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON 


BY 


JAMES    SCHOULER,   LL.D. 

AUTHOR  OF  "HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  UNDER 
THE  CONSTITUTION" 


NEW  YORK 

DODD,  MEAD   AND    COMPANY 
1897 


Copyright,  1893, 
BY  DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY. 


reserved. 


JOHN  WILSON  AND  SON,  CAMBRIDGE. 


NOTE. 


FOR  materials  to  illustrate  the  present  brief 
sketch,  little  is  available  which  has  not  already 
been  presented  in  the  three  large  volumes 
of  Mr.  Randall's  faithful  biography,  and  the 
extensive  array  of  Jefferson's  writings  long  ago 
officially  published.  But  there  still  remains 
opportunity  to  present  the  services  and  charac 
ter  of  our  illustrious  and  many-sided  statesman 
in  a  somewhat  new  aspect.  With  this  latter 
object  chiefly  in  view,  I  have  used  freely  the 
ampler  materials  of  my  History  of  the  United 
States  in  sketching  his  later  political  career,  so 
long  the  subject  of  bitter  controversy. 

It  has  been  a  source  of  great  pleasure  to  me,  in 
this  modest  literary  diversion,  to  receive  soon  after 
the  publishers'  first  announcement  of  their  pro 
ject,  letters  from  Jefferson's  latest  descendants, 
strangers  personally  to  me  and  residents  of  a 

101854 


iv  NOTE. 

distant  State,  expressing  their  fullest  confidence 
in  my  undertaking.  The  abundant  love  and 
solicitude  which  this  great  son  of  Virginia  sent 
coursing  far  down  through  his  blood  posterity 
should  afford  a  lasting  token  of  the  tenderness 
of  his  nature. 

J.  S. 
MAY  i,  1893. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER   I. 

PAGE 

Parentage  and  Early  Childhood  (1743-1757)  .     .     .        7 

CHAPTER    II. 
A  Ward's  Education  (1757-1765) 23 

CHAPTER   III. 
Professional  Career  and  Marriage  (1766-1774)   .     .       42 

CHAPTER    IV. 
Morning  of  Revolution  (1773-1775) 61 


CHAPTER   V. 

Declaration  of  Independence  (1775-1776)  .     ...       71 

CHAPTER   VI. 
Virginia's  Reformer  and  Legislator  (1776-1779)      .       90 


CHAPTER  VII. 
Governor  in  War  Times  (1779-1781) 107 


VI  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

PAGE 

Congress  and   the   Ordinance  of  Freedom  (1781- 

1784) 122 

CHAPTER    IX. 
Minister  to  France  (1784-1789) 133 

CHAPTER   X. 
Secretary  of  State  (1790-1794) 153 

CHAPTER   XI. 
Party  Leader  and  Vice-President  (1794-1801)     .     .     177 

CHAPTER   XII. 
A  Republican  President  (1801-1809) 198 

CHAPTER   XIII. 
Founder  of  a  University  (1809-1826) 224 

CHAPTER   XIV. 
Conclusion  (July  4,  1826  ) 240 


INDEX 249 


LIFE  OF  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 


CHAPTER   I. 

PARENTAGE   AND    EARLY   CHILDHOOD. 

I743-1 7 57- 

THOMAS  JEFFERSON,  of  Monticello,  was  born  and 
bred,  lived,  died,  and  was  finally  buried  on  the  pa 
ternal  acres.  This  can  rarely  be  said  of  an  American. 
He  gained  world-wide  renown  in  his  day,  not  only 
as  a  leader  of  creative  skill  in  revolutionary  and  re 
publican  politics,  but  also  as  the  friend  of  science, 
philosophy,  and  the  arts.  Yet  his  dearest  environ 
ments  were  remote  from  the  great  cities,  and  he 
travelled  abroad  only  to  love  home  the  better.  Few 
men  of  his  times  ever  soared  for  improvement  in  so 
I  many  different  directions,  or  dipped  with  so  congenial 
I  a  disposition  into  the  future.  Books  and  men  were 
J  his  constant  sources  of  information;  the  savants  of 
Europe  were  his  frequent  guests  and  correspondents ; 
and  planning  for  his  fellow-countrymen  a  seminary 
of  learning  far  in  advance  of  his  age,  he  essayed 
before  he  died  to  lift  his  simple  market- town  to  the 
level  of  a  university  seat. 

Charlottesville,  still  the  county  site  and  abode  of 
advanced    education,    nestles   to   this   day   dreamily 


8  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

among  the  beautiful  hills  of  the  Blue  Ridge  in  obsti 
nate  seclusion;  and  that  rendezvous  of  Albemarle 
produce,  like  Albemarle  County  itself,  was  mapped  off 
in  the  central  wilderness  of  the  Old  Dominion,  and 
commenced  the  stern  struggle  for  political  existence 
not  far  from  the  very  year  when  its  most  conspicuous 
child  was  born  upon  the  estate  of  an  original  settler 
and  patentee.  The  whole  picturesque  country  of 
midland  Virginia  which  lies  near  the  eastern  slope  of 
the  Blue  Ridge,  where  the  Rivanna,  a  tributary  of  the 
James  River,  takes  its  rise,  has  been  peopled  for  a 
century  and  a  half  by  an  Anglo-American  race  de 
voted  to  farming,  —  that  pursuit  with  which  Jefferson 
all  his  life  proudly  claimed  a  personal  connection. 
Nearly  its  whole  white  population  continues  of  native 
stock  and  homogeneous  to  this  very  day.  But  in  the 
backgammon  of  life  throughout  the  solid  South  the 
checkers  were  always  of  two  distinct  colours.  In  this 
mountainous  vicinity,  prior  to  the  Civil  War,  the  black 
race  comprised  the  labouring  class,  though  slavery 
existed  only  in  its  mildest  form,  and  popular  senti 
ment  inclined  —  towards  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century  at  least  —  to  voluntary  emancipation. 

Here  luxury  never  flourished,  There  were  a  few 
large  proprietors,  to  be  sure  ;  but  the  rich  equipages 
and  profusion,  the  costly  plate,  the  sable  retinue, 
the  coaches  of  state  drawn  by  six  horses  and  decked 
out  with  three  mounted  postilions,  —  that  style  of  liv 
ing  which  tradition  assigns  to  the  first  families  in  the 
colonial  age  of  Virginia,  —  should  be  associated  rather 


PARENTAGE  AND  EARLY  CHILDHOOD.        9 

with  the  tobacco  lords  of  much  earlier  settlements 
about  the  tide-water  region  of  the  Chesapeake,  acces 
sible  to  commerce.  But  wherever  the  Virginia  colony 
extended  its  population,  there  long  flourished  a  sort 
of  recognized  gentry,  the  basis  of  whose  importance 
consisted  in  large  landed  freeholds,  after  the  fashion 
of  the  mother  country,  with  negroes  thrown  in  besides, 
to  make  the  chattel  wealth  show  off  for  more  than  its 
actual  worth.  Washington,  after  his  marriage  with  a 
rich  widow,  and  Madison  as  well  as  Jefferson,  furnish 
notable  examples  of  this  aristocratic  distinction  among 
settlements  remote  from  the  sea;  and  the  landed 
aristocracy  of  Virginia  were  throughout  the  last  cen 
tury,  and  far  into  the  present,  the  natural  leaders  in 
native  politics. 

Among  the  lowland  gentry  more  particularly,  the 
wastefulness  of  the  prevalent  methods  of  cultivation 
was  rarely  figured  or  improved  upon.  Tobacco  crops 
were  raised  under  an  overseer's  personal  direction, 
and  the  staple  found  a  foreign  market,  handled  by 
middlemen  who  had  their  own  living  to  make.  Com 
missions  and  transportation  charges  were  piled  upon 
usurious  advances.  Meantime  the  barons  of  the  soil, 
polished,  accomplished,  and  hospitably  inclined,  and 
many  of  them  quite  well  educated,  spent  their  days 
in  visiting  one  another  on  horseback,  and  hunting 
bears,  deer,  and  small  game  together.  They  were 
loyal  to  the  Crown  and  to  the  Established  Church  of 
the  colony.  Quite  a  social  gulf  separated  the  Car 
ters,  Fairfaxes,  Lees,  Randolphs,  and  others  from  the 


10  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

common  colonists.  The  epitome  of  the  British  squire 
became  thus  as  indigenous  as  possible  on  the  soil  of 
our  earliest  colony. 

The  undulating  soil  of  this  Albemarle  region,  whose 
chief  richness  lies  in  the  valleys  and  river  bottoms, 
has  yielded  periodical  crops,  —  not  in  tobacco  es 
pecially,  or  what  we  commonly  class  as  Southern 
staples,  but  in  wheat,  corn,  and  oats,  — American  farm 
products  such  as  were  always  associated  in  sense  with 
free  labour.  The  Blue  Ridge  farmer  was  never  a 
paragon  of  thrift,  and  good  lands  have  run  frequently 
to  waste  for  want  of  top-dressing  and  an  opportunity 
to  recuperate.  Manufactures,  of  course,  could  not 
flourish  hereabouts  so  long  as  skilled  artisans  and 
mechanics  were  repelled  by  the  deadly  nightshade  of 
slavery ;  and  though  times  perhaps  are  changing  for 
the  better,  we  still  find  the  Albemarle  capitalist  who 
sets  up  for  a  manufacturer  occupied  chiefly  in  mend 
ing  broken  ploughs  and  wagons,  advertising  repairs 
as  his  specialty. 

Monticello,  or  "  Little  Mountain  "  (a  name  of  Jef 
ferson's  own  coinage  for  a  height  belonging  to  his 
patrimony),  lies  about  three  miles  easterly  from  Char- 
lottesville,  on  the  old  county  road.  Charlottesville, 
when  wide  awake,  boasts  a  population  of  about  four 
thousand  souls,  white  and  black.  Hiring  a  livery- 
carriage,  —  for  the  hotel  is  without  one,  —  and  leav 
ing  behind  the  Blue  Ridge  and  this  shambling  but 
highly  respectable  county  town  with  its  medley  of 


PARENTAGE    AND  EARLY  CHILDHOOD.       ll 

brick  buildings,  new  and  dilapidated,  its  unpaved 
streets,  bad  drainage,  and  street  cars  drawn  by  mules 
on  the  main  highway  to  and  from  the  University,  we 
are  soon  in  an  open  country  of  surprising  loveliness. 
The  modest  Italian  crest  is  visible  in  front  for  a  con 
siderable  part  of  the  ride ;  being  a  hemispherical 
hill  to  the  left  of  the  landscape,  shouldered  on  the 
right  by  the  higher  Carter's  Mountain.  The  painted 
dome  of  the  mansion-house  which  Jefferson  built 
peers  invitingly  through  the  trees  which  fringe  the 
horizon.  Delightful,  no  doubt,  must  be  this  road  in 
early  summer ;  but  in  the  springtime  its  stiff  red  soil, 
soaked  by  the  streamlets  which  percolate  the  banks, 
and  run  discoloured  as  though  from  some  hidden 
slaughter-pen,  so  befouls  the  carriage,  which  rolled 
out  of  the  town  in  bright  condition,  that  our  negro 
driver  to  little  purpose  fords  the  creek  on  the  home 
ward  ride,  so  as  to  clear  the  wheels  of  mud,  instead 
of  taking  the  usual  bridge. 

But  the  private  road  up  Monticello,  when  reached, 
is  clean  and  dry  in  comparison.  Entering  the  latter 
at  an  unoccupied  porter's  lodge  of  modern  erection, 
we  boldly  throw  open  the  double  gates,  —  after  ring 
ing  a  bell  to  summon  the  overseer  farther  on,  —  and 
proceed  on  our  ride  towards  the  summit  through  a 
natural  growth  of  forest  trees.  About  midway  we 
pass  the  family  burial-lot,  close  to  the  road,  which 
Congress  has  recently  protected  by  a  substantial  fence 
of  high  iron  spikes;  providing,  in  addition,  a  new 
granite  obelisk  to  the  statesman  in  place  of  the 


12  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

original  one,  which  vandals  and  relic-hunters  had 
chipped  and  carried  off  piecemeal  long  ago.  Strange 
is  it  that  pilgrims,  even  in  their  venerating  mood, 
should  incline  so  to  theft  and  sacrilege  ;  but  respect 
for  property  is  one  of  the  restraints  which  social 
acquaintance  fortifies,  and  wherever  we  roam  the  sav 
age  instinct  asserts  itself  to  appropriate  at  pleasure, 
if  not  watched  or  interfered  with. 

On  the  summit,  which  is  half  a  mile  from  the 
county  road,  we  reach  the  famous  mansion-house. 
The  carriage  stops,  met  by  the  overseer  in  the 
owner's  absence,  and  the  visitor  walks  over  the  slop 
ing  lawn,  confronted  in  the  basement  of  the  edifice 
by  a  row  of  negro  dwellings,  connected  with  the  main 
house  by  a  subterranean  passage.  In  fact,  the  whole 
ingenious  substratum  of  stables  and  servants'  quarters 
on  either  side  of  the  hill,  while  harmonizing  with  the 
general  plan,  is  tastefully  concealed  from  the  upper 
lawn,  where  graceful  and  rolling  ramparts  offer  noth 
ing  to  the  vision  but  what  is  picturesque  and  pleasing. 
Except,  in  fact,  for  a  brick  pavilion  or  two  still  re 
maining,  no  building  Is  here  beheld  but  the  compact 
and  commodious  mansion  which  fills  the  central 
foreground;  all  the  rest  is  a  horizon  of  landscape 
scenery. 

Monticello  house,  like  the  mind  which  planned  it, 
was  the  first  in  Virginia,  if  not  in  all  these  thirteen 
colonies,  to  relieve  the  English  imitative  model  by 
something  of  the  daintiness  and  delicacy  of  French 
and  Italian  art.  Windows  and  piazzas  of  various 


PARENTAGE  AND  EARLY  CHILDHOOD.       13 

shapes  and  patterns  are  discerned  at  different  points. 
Solid  and  sombre  brick  walls  are  lightened  in  effect 
by  white  trimmings  and  green  blinds,  while  the  small 
red  cupola  which  marks  the  apex  of  the  building 
consisting  of  but  one  lofty  balustraded  story,  gives 
vivacity  and  a  pleasing  finish  to  the  pile.  Arched 
piazzas  may  be  seen  on  either  side  opening  upon  a 
terraced  walk,  and  the  entrance  to  the  house  both  in 
the  front  and  rear  is  by  a  spacious  portico  orna 
mented  by  long  steps  and  lofty  pillars,  like  the  ap 
proach  to  some  Grecian  temple.  A  noble  front  hall, 
nearly  square,  into  which  open  the  private  apartments 
of  the  house,  through  glass  doors  or  otherwise,  makes 
the  central  attraction  of  the  interior.  Here  no 
doubt  geniality  was  generated  while  the  original  host 
was  alive ;  and  yet  the  deeper  inspiration  of  these 
interior  arrangements  must  have  been  to  invite  the 
outside  enjoyment  of  books,  conversation,  and  natural 
scenery.  The  details  of  the  premises  have  altered 
much  in  minor  respects  since  Jefferson's  death ;  yet 
unquestionably  the  mansion  which  he  modelled  and 
remodelled  in  the  course  of  a  long  life  stands  sub 
stantially  as  he  left  it. 

The  pure  air  of  this  mountain  top  is  wholesome 
and  bracing;  the  lawn  about  the  premises  is  taste 
fully  sloped,  and  the  views  in  every  direction  are 
enchanting.  Nature  maintains  herself  superior  to  the 
ravages  of  time  in  such  a  situation,  and  the  chance 
tourist  feels  a  thrill  of  that  pleasure  which  must  have 
vibrated  through  the  whole  atmosphere  when  this 


\ 


14  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

generous  abode  was  in  its  glory.  But  of  all  the  out 
side  points  of  observation,  none  interests  the  traveller 
so  much  as  that  from  the  northeast  portico,  which 
constitutes  the  main  entrance  to  the  house.  A  dia 
gram  still  traceable  on  its  high  ceiling  displays  the 
points  of  the  compass ;  and  here  one  may  sit  at  ease, 
gazing  down  into  the  broad  and  tranquil  valley  whose 
circumference  stretches  as  far  as  the  eye  can  reach 
towards  the  coast-line  of  the  vast  Virginia  plain. 
Were  one  particular  space  in  the  extensive  fore 
ground  a  lake,  (Jefferson  used  to  say,)  and  a  small 
hill  in  shape  and  size  resembling  the  chief  Egyptian 
pyramid  a  volcano,  the  scene  would  be  perfect. 

A  spot  of  peculiar  interest  lies  closer  still  to  the 
foot  of  Monticello  in  this  easterly  direction,  —  Shad- 
well,  still  a  post-office  hamlet,  though  nearly  destitute 
of  dwellings.  Peaceful  Shadwell  is  distant  about  a 
mile  and  a  half  beyond  the  entrance  gates  of  Monti- 
cello,  on  the  same  county  road  which  we  took  from 
Charlottesville.  There,  on  a  gentle  slope,  not  far 
from  the  winding  Rivanna,  was  visible,  as  late  as  the 
middle  of  this  century,  if  not  later,  the  rubbish  of 
plaster  and  chimney  bricks  and  the  ruinous  founda 
tions  of  a  once  ample  farmhouse  which  was  acci 
dentally  burned  to  the  ground  in  that  distant  epoch 
when  King  George  was  trying  to  tax  these  colonies. 

Upon  this  latter  mansion-site,  where  sheep  and 
cattle  browse  silently  when  the  meadow  grass  is  green, 
was  born  the  third  President  of  the  United  States,  — 


PARENTAGE  AND  EARLY  CHILDHOOD.       15 

in  the  humbler  wooden  dwelling  which  his  father  had 
erected  after  the  usual  colonial  pattern,  with  great 
ground  rooms,  guest-chambers,  and  outside  chimneys ; 
and  his  own  boyhood  was  spent  close  to  the  fields  of 
rustling  corn.  Jefferson  dwelt  always  upon  the  pater 
nal  acres,  but  not  in  the  same  continuous  habitation. 
Monticello,  a  forest-covered  height  in  his  father's  day, 
and  a  wild  possession,  though  part  of  the  original 
purchase,  was  to  Jefferson's  youth  a  remote  attain 
ment.  But  the  time  came  when  he  could  look  down ; 
and  thus,  after  all,  will  the  American  build  finally  to 
suit  the  scope  of  his  own  ambition  and  character, 
rather  than  conform  to  the  plans  of  an  evanescent 
ancestry  and  extend  the  original  foundations.  Yet 
Shadwell,  gazing  to  the  hills  for  daily  strength,  retains 
ajylvan  beauty  of  its  own,  with  which  any  commoner 
who  founds  a  family  rather  than  a  personal  career  of 
distinction  may  well  content  himself.  Near  this 
humpy  and  overgrown  hollow  of  ruin,  as  the  last 
memorial  of  his  own  origin  to  mark  the  spot,  a  few 
old  locust  and  sycamore  trees  sway  gently  in  the 
breeze,  —  survivors  of  an  avenue  which  the  young 
heir  planted  here  on  his  twenty-first  birthday,  while 
he  still  occupied  the  homestead. 

Thomas  Jefferson  was  the  first-born  son  and  the 
third  of  ten  children,  six  of  whom  were  daughters, 
two  sons  perishing  in  infancy.  All  were  the  issue  of 
a  single  marriage  which  lasted  some  nineteen  years, 
their  parents  being  Peter  and  Jane  Jefferson,  of  Shad- 
well.  The  birthday  of  Thomas  was  the  2d  of  April, 


1 6  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

1 743,  old  style.  Sixty  years  later,  while  President  of 
the  United  States,  he  suppressed  information  on  that 
point,  because  he  wished  to  put  an  end  to  the  official 
birthday  celebrations,  which  had  begun  under  his  two 
predecessors,  after  the  custom  of  European  monarchs ; 
nor  in  the  memoir  which  he  composed  in  his  final 
retirement,  and  which  described  his  course  of  life  up 
to  the  time  when  he  first  entered  Washington's  cabi 
net,  does  he  seem  to  have  thought  it  of  sufficient 
consequence  to  give  this  date  to  the  public.  But 
in  his  father's  Book  of  Common  Prayer  —  which  was 
a  sacred  possession  —  he  kept  a  complete  family 
record  for  many  years  in  his  own  neat  handwriting ; 
and  here  the  date  of  his  own  birth  was  entered  with 
those  of  his  brothers  and  sisters. 

The  fusion  of  Saxon  self-reliance  with  gentle  pedi 
gree  conduces  strongly  to  mental  and  moral  greatness. 
In  the  veins  of  Thomas  Jefferson  flowed  this  mingled 
blood,  as  in  those  other  familiar  instances  of  Shake 
speare  and  Goethe.  His  father's  sterling  worth  and 
sincerity  first  raised  the  Jefferson  name  to  something 
like  distinction,  while  his  mother  was  of  proud  colo 
nial  pedigree.  The  marriage  of  Peter  Jefferson  and 
Jane  Randolph  was  a  sensible  one, —  he  a  bachelor  in 
the  thirties  who  had  made  a  fair  position  in  life,  and 
she  with  the  clinging  admiration  of  nineteen. 

The  Jeffersons,  though  of  good  yeoman  stock  and 
among  the  earliest  of  the  Virginia  settlers,  had  been 
previously  unconspicuous.  The  missing  link  of  our 
American  families  which  attain  high  celebrity  is  apt 


PARENTAGE  AND  EARLY  CHILDHOOD.      17 

to  be  at  the  great-grandfather ;  and  the  most  illustrious 
of  this  Jefferson  stock  left  his  genealogy  with  perfect 
frankness  short  of  that  shadowy  ancestor.  One,  how 
ever,  who  bore  the  Jefferson  surname  had,  he  knew, 
been  Secretary  of  the  Virginia  Company ;  and  tradi 
tion  ran  that  the  Jeffersons  came  originally  from 
Wales,  and  from  the  vicinity  of  Mount  Snowdon. 
Out  of  respect,  no  doubt,  to  the  latter  legend,  Peter 
Jefferson  named  the  first  estate  which  he  owned  on 
the  James  River  after  that  lofty  British  peak.  But 
Jane  Randolph,  his  wife,  was  the  oldest  daughter  of 
Isham  Randolph,  of  Dungeness,  Adjutant-General  of 
Virginia ;  and  the  Randolphs,  as  all  Virginian  blue- 
bloods  were  well  aware,  held  their  heads  with  good 
reason  among  the  highest  in  the  colony,  —  their  fam 
ily  vine  ramifying  from  Turkey  Island,  near  the  mouth 
of  the  James,  where  the  first  American  progenitor  of 
that  family,  the  son  of  an  English  cavalier,  settled 
about  1660,  his  wife  being  the  daughter  of  a  baronet. 
These  Randolphs  boasted  of  connections  in  the 
mother  country,  by  blood  and  alliance,  with  warriors, 
scholars,  peers  of  the  realm,  and  with  royalty  itself. 
"They  trace  their  pedigree,"  writes  Thomas  Jefferson 
in  his  memoir,  "  far  back  in  England  and  Scotland ;" 
"to  which,"  he  added,  less  incredulous  perhaps  than  in 
different,  "  let  every  one  ascribe  the  faith  and  merit 
he  chooses." 

Easy  in  his  own  circumstances  and  social  position, 
and  finely  educated,  the  son  could  afford  to  antagonize 
his  maternal  relations  and  the  Old  Dominion  aristoc- 

2 


1 8  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

racy  when  he  came  into  public  life.  He,  from  his 
higher  plane,  worked  for  the  common  people  of 
Virginia.  To  such  a  mind,  rilled  with  the  ideals  of  an 
age  of  social  transition,  man  was  the  gold,  and  rank 
but  the  guinea's  stamp ;  and  well  it  is  when  that  noble 
sentiment  of  the  peasant  bard  can  be  expressed  with 
no  gall  of  envy.  But  the  father,  though  liberal,  too, 
in  his  social  inclinations,  was  brought  up  under  more 
fixed  conditions.  His  aim  in  life  was  to  found  a 
family ;  and,  uneducated  himself,  or  rather  self- 
educated,  he,  like  a  true  Anglo-Saxon,  cherished  the 
wish  to  give  his  babes  a  better  bringing  up  than  his 
had  been.  His  course  of  life  befitted  the  end. 
Leaving  in  early  manhood  the  eastern  tide-water 
region  of  Virginia,  where  aristocratic  tastes  were 
chiefly  fostered,  he  sought  the  mountain  table-lands 
of  the  interior,  far  enough  off  for  a  pioneer  life,  and 
by  becoming  a  great  proprietor  insured  public  con 
sideration.  The  trails  of  hostile  Indians  were  still 
fresh  on  the  neighbouring  hills  when  Peter  Jefferson 
arrived  at  what  became  presently  the  county  of  Albe- 
marle.  Here,  by  the  Rivanna,  in  1735,  he  patented 
one  thousand  acres  of  land,  and  proceeded  to  estab 
lish  himself  in  influence,  after  the  customary  mode  of 
the  colony.  Wheat  was  the  staple  he  chiefly  culti 
vated.  About  thirty  slaves  were  employed  on  his 
estate  ;  and  these  he  trained  with  patience  to  be  farm 
hands  and  mechanics  adapted  to  a  new  country. 
Their  number  did  not  greatly  increase  on  his  estate 
with  his  subsequent  fortunes. 


PARENTAGE  AND  EARLY  CHILDHOOD.       19 

From  modest  beginnings,  Peter  Jefferson  rose  to 
local  dignity  and  an  easy  fortune.  It  was  not  for  one 
like  him  to  turn  from  the  sunshine  of  the  colonial 
aristocracy.  His  manly  traits  and  probity  won  him 
the  esteem  and  personal  friendship  of  Virginians  high 
in  the  social  sphere,  who  had  the  penetration  to 
appreciate  his  intrinsic  worth.  The  Randolphs  in  par 
ticular  bestowed  upon  him  much  more  than  their  con 
descension.  Colonel  William  Randolph,  a  scion  of 
that  extensive  family,  became  his  bosom  friend,  taking 
out  his  own  patent  in  the  virgin  soil  of  Albe marie  for 
a  tract  next  to  Jefferson's  of  more  than  double  the 
extent.  When  Peter  Jefferson  wished  a  better  build 
ing-site  than  his  own  domain  could  furnish,  his  genial 
patron  sold  him  the  spot  he  desired  for  a  dwelling- 
house,  and  indeed  a  good  lot  of  four  hundred  acres 
out  of  his  own  reservation,  and  all  for  the  jovial  price 
(which  the  deed  recited)  of  a  big  bowl  of  arrack 
punch.  It  was  not  long  after  that  Peter  strength 
ened  his  connection  still  further  by  marrying  into 
the  family  of  his  friend's  uncle,  —  as  we  have  al 
ready  mentioned,  —  erecting  before  the  nuptials  his 
weather-boarded  house,  and  calling  the  whole  pur 
chase  "Shadwell,"  out  of  compliment  to  his  young 
bride.1  The  names  of  his  two  Virginia  estates  in- 

1  "  Shadwell  "  was  the  name  of  the  parish  in  London  where 
Jane  Randolpn  was  born.  "  Snowdon,"  we  have  seen,  was  the 
name  bestowed  upon  Peter  Jefferson's  estate  on  the  James 
River.  This  marriage  took  place  either  in  1738  or  1739. 
Jefferson's  memoir  gives  the  latter  year,  and  Randall's  biogra 
phy  the  former. 


20  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

dicate  that  the  mind  of  the  elder  Jefferson  dwelt 
somewhat  upon  blood  and  lineage. 

Colonel  Randolph  does  not  appear  to  have  actu 
ally  settled  upon  his  midland  domain.  Probably  he 
viewed  it  rather  as  a  distant  investment.  "  Edgehill  " 
he  called  the  estate,  in  honour  of-his  fighting  ancestors ; 
but  his  home,  as  before,  remained  at  "  Tuckahoe,"  — 
a  plantation  on  the  James  River,  a  few  miles  above 
Richmond.  His  Albemarle  purchase  increased,  no 
doubt,  the  consequence  of  his  friend,  who  was  near 
by  to  superintend  it ;  and,  knowingly  or  not,  he  laid 
a  delicate  train  for  uniting  the  two  adjoining  tracts 
by  a  marriage  alliance  in  a  generation  not  remote. 
This  true-hearted  gentleman  died  in  1745  ;  and  Peter 
Jefferson,  at  his  last  request,  went  down  to  Tuckahoe 
to  settle  the  estate  as  executor,  and  to  serve  as  guar 
dian  of  Thomas  Mann  Randolph,  the  infant  son. 
There  he  sojourned  with  his  family  for  seven  years, 
faithfully  and  without  recompense  performing  the 
duties  of  his  trust ;  and  the  earliest  recollection  of 
his  own  son  Thomas  was  the  family  exodus  from 
Shadwell,  when,  a  child  of  two  years,  he  was  carried 
on  a  pillow  by  a  mounted  domestic. 

Every  year  now  added  dignity  to  Peter  Jefferson's 
life.  Like  Washington,  —  his  junior  by  years,  —  he 
had  made  surveying  his  profession.  The  royal  gov 
ernment  employed  him,  together  with  a  college 
professor,  to  run  the  boundary-line  at  North  Caro 
lina.  Afterwards,  with  the  same  co-operation,  he 
published  the  first  map  of  the  Virginia  colony,  with 


PARENTAGE  AND  EARLY  CHILDHOOD.       21 

fair  pretensions  to  accuracy.  Other  distinctions 
awaited  his  return  to  Shadwell.  He  was  made 
colonel  of  the  militia  in  Albemarle  County,  and  a 
delegate  shortly  after  to  the  House  of  Burgesses, 
—  local  honours  both  of  the  highest  grade.  Still 
earlier  in  his  life  among  these  mountain  highlands, 
and  when  the  county  was  first  set  off,  he  had  been 
commissioned  one  of  the  original  justices  of  the 
peace  and  was  county  surveyor  beside. 

Gigantic  of  stature,  and  so  strong  (as  the  story 
runs)  that  he  could  "head"  or  set  upright  at  one 
time  two  hogsheads  of  tobacco  weighing  nearly  a 
thousand  pounds  apiece,  —  one  who,  when  on  duty  run 
ning  the  remote  boundary  line  at  the  southern  fron 
tier  of  his  colony,  bore  hardships  of  hunger  and  ex 
posure  under  which  attendants  of  the  expedition  sank 
exhausted,  —  a  man  grave,  slow,  taciturn  of  speech, 
not  easily  acquainted  with,  but  proving  upon  acquaint 
ance  well  worth  knowing,  —  Colonel  Jefferson  met 
death  just  as  his  fame  and  influence  seemed  entering 
the  meridian.  In  1757  this  pioneer  of  what  seemed 
then  the  far  west  of  Virginia  expired  at  Shadwell  in 
the  fiftieth  year  of  his  age ;  too  young,  of  course,  for 
confirming  his  steadily  growing  reputation,  but  old 
enough  to  have  founded  a  remarkable  family.  How 
many  such  Americans  have  helped  create  a  new  cen 
tre  of  civilized  life.  He  left  a  competence  behind  him, 
but  to  the  last  remained  one  of  Nature's  noblemen, 
unpretending  in  dress  and  demeanour.  Not  indifferent 
to  adventitious  aids,  he  relied  most  upon  self-respect 


22  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

for  eliciting  the  respect  of  others.  While  most  gran 
dees  of  the  Virginia  colony  were  Tories  in  politics, 
he  was  a  Whig,  and  even  as  a  magistrate  he  inclined 
to  the  popular  side.  Through  life  he  retained  a  dis 
like  to  be  waited  on ;  and  his  favourite  maxim  was  the 
sturdy  plebeian  one,  —  "  Never  have  others  do  for  you 
what  you  can  do  for  yourself." 


A    WARD'S  EDUCATION.  2$ 


CHAPTER   II. 

A  WARD'S  EDUCATION. 
1757-1765- 

WHEN  his  father  died,  Thomas  Jefferson  was  fourteen 
years  of  age,  —  a  period  of  childhood  when  orphan 
age  rarely  fails  to  impress  the  oldest  son  with  a 
precocious  sense  of  responsibility.  While  gentle  and 
delicate  in  many  ways,  the  youth  showed  indications 
already  of  a  strong  and  vigorous  character.  The 
best  qualities  of  each  parent  blended  in  his  veins, 
besides  the  ample  endowment  of  sound  physique 
which  they  had  bestowed  upon  him  together.  Some 
thing  of  a  disrelish  for  privilege  and  adventitious 
aids  he  inherited  more  especially  from  his  father,  with 
the  habit  of  sturdy  self-reliance ;  popular  sympathies, 
too,  and  an  experimental  tendency  in  dealing  with 
all  immediate  problems.  This  was  tempered  by  the 
cheerful  humour  which  his  mother  transmitted  to  him, 
and  that  gentle  tact  and  suavity  of  manner,  united 
with  an  air  of  easy  consequence,  which  only  pedigree 
and  good  breeding  can  confer.  What  in  the  father 
had  been  a  fretting  dislike  of  being  waited  on,  broad 
ened  out  in  the  son  —  who  was  more  to  the  manor 
born  —  into  a  distaste  rather  for  ceremonious  etiquette 
on  public  occasions,  and  such  needless  pomp  as  hav- 


24  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

ing  a  mounted  servant  in  his  rear  when  he  rode 
horseback.  Ideality  and  the  picturesque  habit  gave 
glow  to  the  schemes  on  which  his  mind  was  intent, 
though,  perhaps,  he  was  too  practical  to  be  pro 
nounced  imaginative.  This  he  inherited  on  his 
mother's  side  ;  and  from  her,  too,  came  his  refinement 
of  taste,  his  delicate  and  almost  squeamish  appetite,  — 
so  different  from  the  beefy  Briton  type  which  was 
loyally  colonial,  —  and,  so  far  as  we  can  determine, 
that  passionate  delight  in  music  which  made  him  a 
virtuoso  with  the  violin  of  no  mean  order.  Slimness 
of  form  was  another  maternal  gift ;  for  he  owed  to  his 
father  his  large  bones,  his  stature  (when  full  grown, 
of  over  six  feet  two),  and  a  compact  and  sinewy 
frame  capable  of  remarkable  endurance.  The  same 
masculine  parent  had  taught  him  to  study  Nature, 
and  to  take  delight  in  out-of-door  sports,  to  paddle 
and  swim  the  Rivanna,  ride  a  horse  gracefully,  hunt 
for  game  with  his  gun,  and  climb  the  neighbour 
ing  hills  fleet-footed.  A  bias,  finally,  to  figures  and 
the  minute  details  of  calculation,  to  plans,  account- 
books,  estimates,  and  recorded  observations,  came 
naturally  to  the  thrifty  surveyor's  son,  trained  as  he 
had  been  from  the  cradle  to  take  his  established 
place  as  a  landed  country  gentleman. 

A  cheerful  and  vivacious  woman,  by  all  accounts 
fully  up  to  the  standard  of  superficial  accomplish 
ments  which  fashion  then  prescribed  for  her  sex, 
and  an  excellent  housekeeper  withal  (the  crown 
of  qualifications  for  a  Virginian  wife),  Jefferson's 


A    WARD'S  EDUCATION'.  25 

widowed  mother  brought  up  her  brood  of  young 
children  as  a  wise  matron  should,  training  her  six 
daughters  to  homespun  tastes,  and  fitting  them  to 
become  good  wives  and  mothers  like  herself.  She 
lived  long  enough  to  see  the  elder  of  her  two  sons  a 
pillar  of  the  Continental  Congress  when  independence 
was  red  in  the  horizon. 

Impressed  with  the  prevalent  idea  among  the 
Virginia  gentry,  of  preferring  male  issue  and  the  first 
born  son,  and  little  imagining  what  share  his  blood- 
offspring  would  have  in  eradicating  the  principle, 
Peter  Jefferson  had  willed  to  his  younger  son  Ran 
dolph,  now  scarcely  more  than  a  baby,  his  earlier 
estate  on  the  James  River,  known  as  "  Snowdon," 
while  to  Thomas  he  left  the  prouder  inheritance 
of  "  Shadwell."  On  this  latter  domain,  and  in  the 
plain  farmhouse  endeared  to  her  by  the  cooings  and 
twitterings  of  conjugal  life,  Tom's  mother,  as  dower 
tenant,  still  kept  up  the  family  home ;  but  this  was 
more  for  his  sisters  and  little  brother  than  for  himself, 
for  to  the  young  proprietor  it  was  little  else  than 
a  resting-place  in  vacation  time.  Preparation  for  a 
profession  and  the  sterner  duties  of  life  now  took 
strong  hold  of  him  in  bereavement.  Already  had 
his  education  commenced  :  first,  in  an  English  school 
at  Tuckahoe,  and,  after  the  return  to  Shadwell,  in  the 
family  of  a  Scotch  clergyman  by  the  name  of  Doug 
lass,  who  drilled  his  pupil  in  the  first  rudiments  of  the 
Latin  tongue.  Colonel  Jefferson,  though  a  self-made 
man,  appreciated  the  dignity  of  liberal  culture,  and 


26  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

left  dying  directions  which  the  son  remembered  all 
his  life  with  the  tenderest  gratitude.  Often  was  the 
latter  heard  to  say,  when  distinguished  for  his  schol 
arly  attainments,  that  if  he  had  to  decide  between 
the  pleasure  derived  from  the  classical  education 
which  his  father  left  him  and  that  from  his  patrimony, 
he  would  decide  in  favour  of  the  former. 

Thomas's  guardian  sent  him,  soon  after  the  father's 
death,  to  a  famous  boarding-school,  about  fourteen 
miles  from  Shadwell,  which  was  kept  by  Rev.  James 
Maury,  a  cultured  clergyman  of  the  Established 
Church.  No  better  training-school  for  the  classics 
appears  to  have  existed  in  those  times  in  Virginia's 
whole  province ;  and  with  the  grind  of  Latin  and 
Greek  our  youth's  preparation  for  a  college  career  com 
menced  in  earnest.  Schoolmates  here  and  companions 
recalled  the  fatherless  child  in  after  years  as  noted 
for  scholarship,  industry,  and  shyness  ;  a  keen  fellow 
enough  when  once  started  in  the  sports,  yet  always 
reluctant  to  ask  a  holiday.  After  all,  the  cost  of 
classical  education  in  those  colonial  days  could  not 
have  been  very  great ;  for  ^20  a  year  settled  board 
and  instruction  in  full  at  this  renowned  institution, 
where  expenses  were  higher  than  the  average.  The 
Church  of  England  establishment  in  this  Virginia 
colony  drew  over  from  the  mother  country  many 
clergymen,  college  graduates,  and  scholars,  who  eked 
out  the  produce  of  their  glebes  and  tithes  by  taking 
the  planters'  sons  for  pupils;  and  of  these  both 
Douglass  and  Maury  were  men  of  enlightened  theol 
ogy,  averse  to  intolerance. 


A    WARD'S  EDUCATION.  27 

Still  eager  to  take  his  responsible  place  in  life  with 
as  little  delay  as  possible,  our  young  hero  is  seen 
striving  in  the  first  place  to  get  to  college,  and  next 
to  get  through  it.  To  his  guardian,  in  January, 
1760,  he  complains  that  he  loses  much  time  at  his 
boarding-school  by  company  which  detains  him  from 
his  studies.  The  young  proprietor  of  Albemarle 
County  is  courted,  no  doubt,  by  mere  idle  acquaint 
ances  ;  and  perhaps  his  mother  and  sisters,  with  that 
solicitous  affection  peculiar  to  such  relationship,  drive 
over  oftener  than  is  necessary,  to  bring  goodies 
and  ascertain  that  Tom  is  not  studying  himself  to 
(death.  But  this  same  year,  at  all  events,  the  son  and 
/brother  took  his  first  stride,  by  entering  college  in 
an  advanced  class  when  only  seventeen  years  of  age ; 
I  and  two  years  later,  by  another  stride,  he  left  the 
college  curriculum  behind,  to  enter  upon  professional 
studies. 

Williamsburg,  the  capital  of  the  Virginia  Colony 
and  the  seat  of  William  and  Mary  College,  was  a 
town  whose  traditionary  repute  of  colonial  grandeur 
and  a  vice-regal  court  requires  some  grains  of  allow 
ance.  A  shabby  village  of  about  a  thousand  inhabi 
tants,  black  and  white,  contained  the  only  public 
buildings  in  the  colony  worth  mentioning.  One  of 
these  was  the  Capitol,  with  a  pediment  too  high  and  a 
disproportionate  portico,  yet  the  most  pleasing  piece 
of  architecture  in  all  Virginia;  another,  the  col 
lege  piles,  which  Jefferson  once  likened  to  brick-kilns 


28  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

roofed  over.  Earliest  among  American  institutions  of 
higher  learning,  except  Harvard,  William  and  Mary 
College  suffered  sadly  from  the  precarious  influence 
of  royalty  and  the  mother  church,  at  whose  joint 
footstool  it  bent.  Of  the  two  most  illustrious  ma 
triculates  yet  on  its  rolls,  Monroe  left  the  classic 
barracks,  while  an  undergraduate,  to  draw  sword 
against  the  sovereign  patron  ;  while  Jefferson,  though 
an  alumnus,  did  more  indirectly  in  various  ways  than 
any  other  man  to  destroy  the  foundations  of  its  pres 
tige.  Besides  collegians,  Williamsburg  boasted  in 
1760  a  few  rich  residents;  and  these,  with  royal  dig 
nitaries,  the  lawyers  and  big  wigs  of  the  courts  in 
term  time,  and  those  borough  gentry  who  came  from 
all  parts  of  the  colony  to  play  at  parliament,  as  the 
king  would  have  them,  were  rolled  together  at  a  cer 
tain  season  of  the  year  into  a  sort  of  court  society, 
bright  and  even  brilliant,  and  which  could  hardly 
escape  being  a  little  dissipated,  besides,  while  a  royal 
governor  so  accomplished  as  Fauquier  shone  out  as 
the  conspicuous  star. 

Behold  now  our  lank  and  raw-boned  student  with 
the  sandy  hair,  —  of  whom  it  has  been  well  said  that 
he  grew  in  good  looks  with  his  years,  so  as  to  be 
homely  when  young,  comely  in  his  prime,  and  hand 
some  in  old  age,  —  welcomed  heartily  within  the  inner 
circle  of  this  sot  disant  court.  Little,  indeed,  of 
the  college  curriculum  or  of  his  college  classmates 
seems  to  have  impressed  him  in  comparison  with  the 
intimacy  he  quickly  formed  with  three  men,  all  much 


A    WARD'S  EDUCATION'.  29 

older,  of  strong  and  dissimilar  characters,  only  one  of 
whom  could  be  termed,  in  a  proper  sense,  his  instruc 
tor,  and  he,  as  there  is  ground  to  suspect,  not  in  full 
sympathy  with  the  college  faculty.  These  three  men 
were  Prof.  William  Small,  of  William  and  Mary; 
George  Wythe,  a  distinguished  lawyer ;  and  Governor 
Fauquier,  already  mentioned.  To  Small,  in  par 
ticular,  Jefferson  ascribes  a  plastic  influence,  with  an 
emphasis  which  we  might  well  discount  to  the  credit 
of  boyish  inexperience,  had  he  not  penned  the  fervid 
tribute  in  old  age.  "  It  was  my  great  good  fortune," 
he  declares,  "  and  what  probably  fixed  the  destinies 
of  my  life,"  that  this  one  person  happened  then  to  be 
on  the  staff  of  his  Alma  Mater.  A  Scotchman  born, 
and  known  in  later  life  as  Dr.  Small  of  Birmingham, 
the  friend  of  Darwin,  this  excellent  instructor  so 
journed  but  briefly  in  America,  —  leaving  William  and 
Mary,  in  fact,  about  the  same  time  as  did  his  young 
adorer,  and  recrossing  the  ocean.  Professor  of  mathe 
matics  when  Jefferson  entered  college,  he  temporarily 
took,  besides,  the  vacant  chair  in  philosophy,  and 
gave  for  the  first  time  in  that  institution  regular  in 
struction  in  ethics,  rhetoric,  and  polite  literature. 
Upon  the  mind  of  this  favourite  pupil,  who  soon  be 
came  the  companion  of  his  daily  walks,  Small  poured 
the  full  light  of  liberal  methods.  Jefferson  caught 
from  him  the  ardour  of  applied  science,  at  the  loss 
very  likely  of  some  of  those  devout  lessons  he  had 
learned  at  his  mother's  knee,  and  acquired  those 
habits  of  intellectual  induction  and  experiment  from 


30  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

which  he  never  quite  departed.  For  though  in  his 
political  creed  Jefferson  might  become  a  man  of  in 
tuitions,  all  intuitions  were  in  favour  of  liberty. 

Maternal  relatives,  who  moved  among  the  lowland 
grandees,  had  given  our  collegian  an  easy  entrance 
to  the  Governor's  drawing-rooms ;  his  violin  (in  great 
demand)  and  personal  attractiveness  did  more  for 
him.  Under  the  wing  of  his  most  serviceable  pro 
fessor,  he  soon  made  a  fourth  and  listening  guest 
at  Fauquier's  own  table.  It  was  proof  of  his  in 
nate  strong  sense  that  such  flattering  favour  did  not 
turn  the  youth's  head.  Fauquier,  though  polished 
and  well-bred,  besides  an  accomplished  scholar  and 
patron  of  the  arts,  was  a  hardened  gambler;  but 
though  it  was  said  of  him  that  he  made  gambling 
fashionable  in  the  province  he  ruled,  Jefferson  never 
took  a  hand  at  such  sport  in  his  life,  nor  even  knew 
one  card  from  another.  Small  corresponded  with  his 
young  proteg6  afterward  from  over  the  water ;  but 
when  it  came  to  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution,  their 
politics  diverged.  And  though  Wythe's  association 
with  Jefferson  ripened  into  the  longest  and  most 
useful  intimacy  of  the  three,  it  proved  in  time  that 
the  junior,  both  in  legislation  and  politics,  gained 
power  to  direct  his  own  teacher. 

Jefferson's  first  year  at  college  was  idle,  as  often 
occurs  when  one  works  hard  to  get  there.  The  attrac 
tions  of  society  allured  him  from  his  books,  and  he 
spent  somewhat  heavily  upon  dress  and  fine  horses. 
A  handsome  and  spirited  steed  was  always  a  favourite 


A    WARD'S  EDUCATION.  31 

indulgence  with  Jefferson ;  and  in  jaunty  youth,  when 
his  riding-horse  was  brought  to  the  door,  he  would 
not  mount  until  he  had  found  the  creature's  coat 
so  well  groomed  and  glossy  that  it  would  not  soil 
his  white  cambric  handkerchief.  In  sending  to  his 
guardian  the  account  of  his  first  year's  expenditure  at 
college,  the  ward  censured  his  own  extravagance,  and 
resolved  to  turn  the  next  year  another  leaf.  With 
that  purpose  in  view,  he  discarded  miscellaneous 
Company,  hung  up  the  violin,  and  "sporting  the 

/oak,"  —  as  the  college  phrase  goes,  —  bent  himself 
to  the  mastery  of  his  tasks  with  a  zeal  that  was  truly 

|  astonishing.     Fifteen  hours  a  day,  so  the  story  runs, 

1  was  his  habitual  course  of  study  during  this  second 
year;  the  only  physical  exercise  he  took  to  offset 
such  mental  overwork  being  a  sharp  run  about  twilight 
to  a  particular  stone,  about  a  mile  distant  from  the 

.town,  and  back  again.  He  gained  the  end  he  had 
immediately  in  view,  and  graduated  from  William  and 
Mary  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  having  compassed  the 
college  course  in  half  the  customary  time. 

Jefferson  left  college  with  the  fame  of  a  prodigy, 
—  indeed,  of  a  profound  and  accomplished  scholar 
for  one  so  young.  He  developed  a  decided  taste  for 
both  mathematics  and  the  classics,  —  studies  which 
he  faithfully  cultivated  all  his  life.  It  is  not  in  hur- 
rj^d  and  heterogeneous  cram  that  true  scholarship  is 
attained  ;  but  when  the  temporary  gorge  of  knowledge 
subsides  into  a  lasting  appetite,  the  intellectual  life  is 
assured.  Jefferson's  insatiate  passion  to  finish  his 


32  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

preparatory  period  showed  strength  of  character,  and, 
indeed,  of  body  besides ;  and  the  work  which  would 
have  ruined  many  youths  in  health  did  him  really  no 
harm.  Habitual  thought  and  sympathy  turned  in  a 
practical  direction ;  the  new  and  adaptable  absorbed 
his  best  time  and  energies ;  but  literature  remained 
through  life  a  solace  and  a  recreation.  In  Greek  and 
Latin  he  read,  as  do  few  men  of  action  in  our  later 
day,  the  most  difficult  authors  during  the  spare  hours 
he  could  snatch  from  official  toil.  As  for  mathe 
matics,  he  made  the  ready  use  of  fluxions  in  his  own 
private  estimates.  In  English  composition  he  ac 
quired  almost  insensibly  so  attractive  ,a  style  of  expres 
sion —  pellucid  as  a  lake,  picturesque  and  choice  in 
the  use  of  words,  and  warm  because  of  his  heart's 
earnestness  —  as  easily  to  grow  into  the  best  penman 
of  his  age  in  all  America.  This  skill  he  displayed  in 
drafting  a  statute  in  the  briefest  phrase  possible,  or 
in  composing  gre'  .j  popular  documents,  or  in  graceful 
and  stimulating  private  letters ;  and  all  this  in  the 
neatest  of  chirography,  that  needed  no  amanuensis. 
Of  liberal  studies,  however,  Jefferson  relished  ethics 
and  metaphysics  the  least;  for  his  bent  was  towards 
concrete  facts,  and  not  abstractions.  Indeed,  he  was 
wont  to  deride  ethics  as  a  science ;  holding  to  the 
theory  that  man  is  destined  for  society,  and  that  his 
o moral  life  should  be  regulated  with  that  object  in 
J  yiew.  The  thirst  for  science  which  Professor  Small 
implanted  was  perhaps,  however,  the  most  striking 
result  of  his  brief  college  training.  So  intently  did  he 


A    WARD'S  EDUCATION.  33 

fasten  upon  new  ideas,  new  discoveries,  that  his  cor 
respondence  anticipated  various  practical  inventions 
of  the  future ;  and  it  might  almost  be  said  that  with 
extending  arms  he  reached  forward  to  the  nineteenth 
century.  But  whatever  he  might  invent,  he  had  none 
of  the  nineteenth  century  disposition  to  appropriate 
the  gain  to  himself,  but  made  the  whole  world 
patentee. 

All  this  development  of  early  tendencies  might 
seem  to  have  marked  Jefferson  for  an  educator. 
But  the  habit  of  self-discipline  was  the  choicest  gain 
of  his  college  life ;  stem -winding,  as  it  were,  in  his 
mechanism,  no  extraneous  key  was  ever  needful  to 
set  and  keep  him  going.  There  is  nothing  like  hav 
ing  the  battle  of  life  in  view  to  nerve  youth  to  its 
most  giant  efforts.  Politics  and  the  profession  of  law 
interested,  as  they  would  most  naturally,  a  man  born 
to  county  influence  and  activity.  Coke  upon  Little 
ton,  and  the  black  bread  of  th.  common  law  were 
next  the  Spartan  fare  which  our  college  graduate 
digested.  For  five  ensuing  years  —  a  space  more 
than  double  what  he  had  allowed  for  that  universal 
dip  which  makes  collegiate  training  — lie  pursued  pro 
fessional  studies  between  Williamsburg  and  his  Shad- 
well  home  ;  serener  now,  we  fancy,  in  the  thought  that 
he  was  narrowing  the  edge  to  fit  his  blade  for  use. 
The  friendship  and  personal  supervision  of  the  last  -f 
his  strange  table  coterie  promised  much  for  his  r  '.- 
vancement  in  active  life  ;  for  George  Wythe,  in  whose 
office  he  now  hung  up  his  hat  as  a  law  student,  was 

3 


34  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

the  pride  of  such  later  intellects  as  John  Marshall  and 
Henry  Clay,  and  a  pattern  of  that  happy  type  of 
sound  and  honourable  lawyer  which  carries  sobriety 
into  the  public  service  when  duty  calls,  and  sacrifices 
emolument  to  the  general  good.  Jefferson  styled  this 
inflexible  patriot,  after  an  intimacy  of  forty  years, 
"  the  Cato  of  his  country,  without  the  avarice  of  the 
Roman."  He  directed  Jefferson's  professional  studies 
in  these  years,  led  him  into  practice,  and  continued 
until  death  his  affectionate  friend. 

Omnivorous  still  in  his  thirst  for  knowledge,  but 
with  steadier  concentration  of  purpose,  Jefferson  kept 
up  those  tremendous  working  habits  which  remain  a 
marvel  to  most,  but  of  which  others  are  incredulous. 
The  common  run  of  mankind  seldom  imagine  how 
strong  a  steel  spring  may  be  coiled  up  in  one  who 
cherishes  a  precocious  ambition  for  manly  life  with  a 
precocious  sense  of  responsibility.  Rising  punctually 
in  winter  when  his  bedroom  clock  pointed  at  five 
o'clock,  and  in  summer  as  early  as  the  hands  could 
be  distinguished,  he  commenced  his  studies ;  retiring 
not  later  than  ten  in  the  winter,  and  in  the  summer 
an  hour  earlier.  He  did  not  neglect  distinguished 
company  while  at  Williamsburg,  but  at  drowsy  Shad- 
well  he  was  usually  master  of  his  time;  and  there, 
within  their  own  environment,  his  good  mother  and 
sisters  helped  him  live  by  rule,  well  content,  we  dare 
say,  as  women-folk  usually  are,  to  have  the  object  of 
their  darling  pride  safe  at  home.  Twilight  was  the 


A    WARD'S  EDUCATION.  35 

favourite  time  for  assimilating  the  mental  food  of 
the  day  in  a  sort  of  solitary  pastime  ;  he  would  pad 
dle  his  canoe  across  the  stream,  or  scour  the  road 
on  horseback  at  a  heroic  gallop,  or  foot  it  up  the 
toilsome  steep  of  Monticello,  —  already  his  young 
lordship's  favourite  haunt,  and  the  site  whereon  he 
meant  to  build  a  stately  mansion  when  he  became 
of  age,  having  set  his  workmen  to  clear  the  trees 
somewhat  at  the  top  with  that  end  in  view. 

Fortunately  for  the  plans  of  conglomerate  self- 
instruction  which  were  his  own  crude  invention, 
Thomas  showed  himself  a  youth  of  simple  tastes. 
He  was  not  even  a  tobacco-smoker.  He  was  blessed, 
moreover,  by  inheritance  with  good  digestion,  sunny 
humour,  and  a  vigorous  constitution  which  could  bear 
many  a  strain  for  learning's  sake.  When  the  puny 
Madison,  inspired  by  his  older  friend's  example,  made 
a  like  systematic  assault  upon  omniscience  while  a 
college  student  at  Princeton,  he  nearly  killed  himself 
in  the  effort.  Noble  zeal  lights  up  the  dullest  folio 
pages ;  and  it  was  no  small  relief  to  that  drudgery  of 
reading  by  the  square  foot,  which  the  sages  of  the  law 
then  exacted,  that  Jefferson  loved  music  so  fondly, 
and  could  draw  strains  of  dainty  melody  from  his 
unobtrusive  companion  to  suit  the  lonely  mood.  No 
piano  or  organ  figured  in  the  American  back-country 
in  these  days ;  but  Jefferson  sang  well,  and  his  sister 
Jane,  who  was  fond  of  music  like  himself,  joined  him 
in  the  new  songs  and  Sunday  psalmody. 

Coke    upon    Littleton,    in    the    antiquated    text, 


36  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

furnished  the  uninviting  banquet  for  colonial  law- 
students  in  these  times ;  and  though  berating  "  the 
old  dull  scoundrel  "  in  the  hours  when  he  longed,  like 
all  youths,  to  be  off  on  a  frolic,  Jefferson  learned,  as 
time  went  on,  to  really  love  this  sturdy  exponent  of  our 
common  law,  with  his  Whig  principles  and  tenacious 
grasp  of  individual  freedom,  —  freedom,  one  might 
say,  which  English  jurisprudence  concedes  through 
a  judicious  use  of  technicalities.  He  liked  less  Black- 
stone  of  later  vogue,  with  his  honeyed  style,  which  (as 
he  used  to  say) ,  though  making  the  law  more  attrac 
tive  for  study,  sent  our  younger  race  of  lawyers  sliding 
backward  into  Toryism.  Hard  as  any  one  will  find 
it  to  condense  Coke,  Jefferson  made  common-place 
books  and  abridgments  for  his  own  convenience.  He 
pondered  over  the  cruelty  of  early  codes  ;  and  in  his 
notes  he  went  back  to  old  Bracton  and  the  fountain- 
head  of  English  law,  for  he  disdained  to  be  super 
ficial.  French,  Latin,  Greek,  and  other  liberal  studies 
he  kept  up  with  equal  pace,  in  the  conviction  that 
rotation  in  daily  tasks  was  of  itself  a  recreation. 

But  all  was  not  work  and  no  play  with  Jefferson, 
for  youth  has  its  effervescent  spirits,  however  sombre 
the  main  purpose.  .Journeying  to  and  fro  between 
the  Blue  Ridge  and  the  capital,  he  had  taken  part  in 
many  a  gay  frolic  at  hospitable  mansion-houses  by 
the  way ;  and  on  the  earliest  of  these  occasions,  just 
before  entering  college,  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  a 
happy-go-lucky  fellow,  somewhat  older  than  himself, 


A    WARD'S  EDUCATION.  37 

who  had  lately  failed  in  trade,  and  was  about  to  take 
another  cast  for  a  livelihood.  His  spirits  were  abun 
dant  ;  and  by  his  rollicking  stories  and  mimicry,  his 
fiddling,  dancing,  and  practical  jokes,  he  kept  the 
young  folks  of  the  company  in  constant  mirth.  This 
was  Patrick  Henry,  whose  presage  of  immortality 
began  about  the  time  that  he  knocked  up  his  new 
acquaintance,  soon  after  the  latter  had  matriculated 
at  Williamsburg,  to  tell  him  that  he  had  come  to 
town  to  get  a  lawyer's  license,  —  having,  in  fact, 
studied  for  his  new  profession  only  about  six  weeks. 

At  the  Christmas  holiday  season  in  1762,  Jefferson 
packed  his  law  books  in  his  trunk  to  spend  the  winter 
in  reading  them  at  home ;  as  usual  visiting  seats  of 
Virginia  hospitality  on  the  way.  While  the  days 
at  Shadwell  resembled  one  another  like  two  peas, 
many  an  inquiring  message  did  he  send  through  his 
college  friend,  John  Page,  to  the  Williamsburg  girls, 
one  of  whom,  Rebecca  Burwell,  was  the  especial 
favourite  of  his  fancy.  She  had  shown  encourage 
ment  by  presenting  him  with  a  watch-paper  cut  and 
painted  by  her  own  fair  hands.  But  Jefferson's  suit 
on  his  return  did  not  prosper ;  and  he  seems  to-  have 
inclined  to  negotiate  for  delay  until  his  studies  were 
finished.  Woman,  and  a  belle  of  high  spirits  most 
particularly,  permits  no  prudent  procrastination  to  be 
suggested  except  on  her  own  side  ;  and  the  fair  "  Be 
linda,"  whose  vision  had  blurred  the  page  of  his  daily 
tasks,  punished  her  level-headed  lover,  as  many  a 
woman  has  done,  by  suddenly  marrying  another. 


3§  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

This  unsuccessful  venture  turned  Jefferson's  mind 
to  beginning  a  nest,  as  his  father  had  done,  before 
choosing  the  mate.  Reaching  majority  in  April, 
1764,  he  celebrated  that  event,  after  the  fashion  of 
English  squires,  such  as  colonial  Virginia  copied,  by 
planting  that  avenue  of  trees  near  the  dwelling- 
house  whose  weather-worn  survivors  are  its  latest 
landmark.  He  now  took  up  the  county  dignities 
which  fell  to  his  heritage.  He  became  a  justice  of 
the  peace  and  parish  vestryman.  With  an  eye  to  local 
schemes  of  public  benefit,  he  set  on  foot  a  subscription 
and  procured  an  act  of  the  legislature  for  removing 
obstructions  and  making  the  Rivanna  navigable,  so 
that  produce  could  be  sent  down  to  the  seaboard. 

Though  far  from  handsome  at  this  period,  as 
we  have  already  intimated,  Jefferson  was  of  most 
engaging  manners  and  appearance.  His  complexion 
was  ruddy,  his  skin  .delicate,  his  teeth  sound  and 
regular ;  his  deep-set  hazel  eyes  beamed  with  tender 
expression.  His  manners,  earnest,  vivacious,  and 
sympathetic,  not  only  captivated  the  young,  but  made 
him  a  singular  favourite  with  men  much  older  than 
himself.  To  the  abstemiousness  of  his  habits  we  have 
alluded  before  ;  but  it  was  something  to  say  of  one 
who  belonged  to  the  class  known  as  gentlemen,  that  he 
refrained  through  life  from  quarrels  such  as  in  these 
times  were  settled  by  the  code,  neither  bestowing  a 
personal  indignity  nor  receiving  one.  His  whole 
bearing  and  disposition  bespoke  the  simple,  refined, 


A    WARD'S  EDUCATION.  39 

and  gentle  associations  among  which  he  had  been 
brought  up.  Placid  of  expression,  he  grew  to  be  firm 
and  tenacious  of  purpose,  even  where  he  seemed  for 
the  moment  to  yield  to  others. 

Jefferson  was  tender  in  all  his  family  relations; 
and  of  his  sisters,  Jane,  the  eldest,  was  his  most 
precious  companion.  The  two  were  congenial  in 
tastes,  fond  of  music,  and  earnestly  intelligent.  Jane 
died  the  year  after  her  brother  came  of  age,  and 
Shadwell  had  no  longer  the  same  charm  for  him. 
His  second  sister  had  already  married ;  and  the  third 
was  united  in  1765,  and  only  two  months  before 
Jane's  last  illness,  to  her  brother's  most  intimate 
friend,  Dabney  Carr.  The  latter  was  a  gifted  young 
Virginian  and  schoolmate,  recently  admitted  to  the 
bar.  He,  like  Jefferson,  was  destined  to  political 
distinction;  but  his  untimely  death,  just  as  the 
day-star  of  revolution  was  rising,  suggests  to  various 
minds  a  parallel  to  young  Josiah  Quincy,  whose  death 
in  the  sister  colony  of  Massachusetts  occurred  but 
two  years  later  under  corresponding  circumstances. 
Both  were  strong  orators,  prescient  of  coming  events, 
whose  memory  inspired  when  action  was  denied 
them;  and  each  in  his  owh  State  emblazoned  a 
family  name  illustrious  in  posterity. 

While  Jefferson  lived  in  his  summer  home,  the  two 
inseparable  comrades  used  to  make  their  daily  tour  to 
the  top  of  Monticello,  where  they  read  or  talked  in 
burning  words  of  the  coming  years.  Young  Thomas 
gave  the  name  to  this  hill,  which  he  now  owned,  —  a 


40  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

name  as  unique  then,  in  America,  as  the  character 
into  which  he  was  fast  shaping.  Under  a  favourite 
oak,  midway  to  the  summit,  they  had  arranged  a 
rustic  seat ;  the  spot  was  mutually  dear  to  them,  and 
they  agreed  that  whichever  of  them  died  first,  the 
other  should  bury  him  there.  Jefferson  fulfilled  the 
compact  in  1773,  on  his  friend's  sudden  decease  ;  and 
thus  originated  the  burial-lot  at  Monticello.  More 
than  this,  he  received  Carr's  widowed  wife  (his  sister 
Martha)  into  his  own  household,  adopting  the  six 
young  children  as  his  own. 

The  marriage  of  this  sister  in  1765,  and  more  still, 
the  death  of  his  beloved  Jane,  loosened  consider 
ably  the  attachment  of  the  young  proprietor  to  his 
father's  homestead.  The  task  of  clearing  the  hill-top 
now  increased  to  a  passion.  Meantime  he  com 
menced  keeping  a  garden  book,  to  which  was  added, 
as  time  went  on,  farm  books,  pocket-expenditure 
books,  fee  books,  and  registers  of  special  matters  ; 
always  methodizing  minute  transactions  of  passing 
interest,  and  experimenting  boldly  and  habitually 
upon  his  farm,  so  as  to  rotate  his  crops,  raise  new 
varieties,  and  keep  the  soil  from  exhaustion.  He 
acquired  a  remarkable  habit  of  jotting  down  details 
with  microscopic  fidelity,  and  then  tabulating,  com 
paring,  and  utilizing  them.  This  curious  precision 
in  details  grew  into  a  settled  trait  of  character. 
He  would  gather  information,  too,  from  books  and 
from  all  sorts  of  men  on  whatever  subject  they 
could  impart  knowledge,  and  then  generalize  with 


A    WARD'S  EDUCATION.  41 

vivid  intelligence.  The  pen  —  that  silent  servant 
—  became  his  almost  inseparable  companion ;  and 
in  the  same  neat  hand  that  challenged  an  oppressive 
King  on  his  fellow-countrymen's  behalf,  he  would 
enter  the  pennies  he  paid  for  his  shoe-strings  or 
dropped  into  a  beggar's  hat.  In  his  garden  book 
were  preserved,  with  illustrating  diagrams,  the  several 
dates  when  certain  esculents  were  planted,  sprouted, 
and  ripened  for  the  table ;  he  recorded  the  tempera 
ture  and  state  of  the  weather  three  times  a  day 
during  a  long  space  of  busy  years ;  and  all  this  not 
from  mere  idle  curiosity,  but  in  the  hope  of  reaching 
some  of  the  hidden  truths  of  Nature.  So  singular  a 
manifestation  of  character  reminds  one  of  Dr.  John 
son's  famous  postulate,  that  the  truly  strong  mind 
is  the  mind  that  equally  embraces  things  both  great 
and  small.  Jefferson's  disparagers  were  wont,  in  the 
days  of  party  strife,  to  ridicule  his  statistics  and  his 
breakfast-table  science;  but  to  the  habit  itself  he 
owed,  unquestionably,  much  of  his  remarkable  suc 
cess  in  mature  life  as  an  economic  administrator  and 
marshal  of  the  people.  In  the  earlier  stages  of  his 
career,  at  all  events,  and  before  he  sacrificed  for 
public  station,  such  methods  advanced,  besides,  his 
pecuniary  fortunes. 


42  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

CHAPTER    III. 

PROFESSIONAL    CAREER   AND   MARRIAGE. 
1766-1774. 

JEFFERSON'S  preparation  for  an  active  career  lasted 
considerably  beyond  the  year  of  his  majority.  He 
did  not  hurry  post-haste  for  a  license  to  practise  law, 

'like  Patrick  Henry,  but  broadened  his  studies  in 
various  directions,  working  very  hard,  and  yet  allow 
ing  himself  for  the  space  he  had  curtailed  at  his  own 

,  choice  from  his  college  career.  It  suited  his  own 
plans  better,  perhaps,  now  that  the  sole  member 
of  its  faculty  whom  he  idolized  had  departed,  to 
let  William  and  Mary  alone,  and  block  out  his 
own  programme  for  mental  acquisition,  free  from 
all  outer  dictation.  A  strong  impulse  to  self-improve 
ment  is  half  the  equipment  of  a  liberal  education; 
and  in  the  judicious  Wythe,  whose  business  office 
served  for  the  headquarters  of  a  student  who  came 
and  went  as  he  chose,  Jefferson  found  an  unfailing 
friend  and  counsellor.  Under  such  flattering  auspices 
he  was  admitted  to  the  bar  in  1767,  about  the  time 
of  his  twenty-fourth  birthday. 

This  was  the  era  of  Great  Britain's  fatal  experi 
ment  in  taxing  her  American  colonies,  and  stirring 
local  events  presaged  the  grand  strife  for  indepen 
dence.  The  British  declaratory  act,  which  asserted 


PROFESSIONAL  CAREER  AND  MARRIAGE,     43 

the  right  of  Parliament  to  tax  these  distant  subjects, 
—  that  right  to  shear  the  wolf,  as  opponents  at  home 
who  denied  not  the  abstract  theory  so  aptly  styled 
it,  —  reached  Virginia  about  the  time  that  Jefferson 
entered  manhood ;  and  the  addresses  and  remon 
strances  which  followed  within  a  few  years,  now  bold 
and  now  respectful,  drew  all  the  intelligent  men  of 
the  colony,  and  the  lawyers  more  particularly,  into  an 
eager  and  prolonged  discussion  of  America's  political 
relations  with  the  mother  country,  and  the  fundamen 
tal  rights  of  external  citizens.  Jefferson's  young  heart 
throbbed  with  excitement,  like  those  of  contempo 
raries  in  our  other  colonies  who  stood  on  the  thresh 
old  of  responsible  existence  :  it  is  in  such  breasts, 
undefiled  by  worldly  strife,  that  the  well-spring  of 
patriotism  leaps  in  crystal  purity.  The  law-student 
left  his  dog's-eared  tomes  and  his  patron's  office  one 
memorable  day  in  1765,  while  the  course  of  study 
occupied  him  at  Williamsburg,  and  stood  at  the  lobby 
entrance  of  the  House  of  Burgesses,  high-shouldered 
among  the  throng,  to  listen  to  a  debate  which  had 
sprung  up  on  the  Stamp  Act,  and  the  spirited  reso 
lutions  which  his  acquaintance,  Patrick  Henry,  now 
launched  into  public  life  as  a  rural  member,  had  just 
drawn  hastily  off  and  introduced.  These  resolutions 
claimed  in  forcible  terms  for  our  translated  colonists 
the  full  rights  of  British  subjects,  including  the  right 
to  levy  taxes  exclusively  by  their  own  representative 
assemblies.  Opposed  in  debate  by  the  whole  Tory 
aristocracy  of  this  legislature,  while  cautious  conserva- 


44  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

tives  dreaded  his  plain  speech,  he  broke  out  into 
that  historical  passage  where,  interrupted  in  his  allu 
sions  to  Caesar  and  Charles  the  First  by  loud  cries  of 
"Treason!  treason!"  he  finished  his  sentence  with 
his  flashing  eye  fixed  on  the  Speaker,  "  and  George 
the  Third  may  profit  by  their  example."  The  warn 
ing  fell  on  his  listeners  like  a  near  thunderbolt  dying 
away  in  distant  rumbles.  Jefferson  could  never  forget 
the  scene. 

Strange  that  the  friend  with  whom  we  have  jested 
lightly,  and  whom  we  have  even  pitied  for  his  idle 
follies,  may  tower  into  a  splendid  exemplar  when 
some  supreme  occasion  has  struck  his  deepest  chord 
and  ours,  revealing  his  true  fibre.  But  men  are  grand 
only  in  grand  moments.  "  They  were  great  indeed," 
wrote  Jefferson  from  his  later  recollection  of  Henry's 
talents  as  a  popular  orator,  at  this  moment  displayed 
for  the  first  time.  "  He  appeared  to  me  to  speak  as 
Homer  wrote." 

There  was  no  gallery  for  spectators  at  that  time  in 
the  House  of  Burgesses ;  nor,  indeed,  had  there 
hitherto  been  need  of  one.  But  times  were  chang 
ing  ;  and  the  little  colonial  legislatures,  which  so 
long  had  served  scarcely  more  than  to  register  the 
royal  pleasure,  became  in  these  days  the  rallying-points 
against  oppression  for  an  aroused  popular  constitu 
ency.  Jefferson's  long  tarrying  as  a  student  in  this 
little  capital  town  proved  of  public  benefit  as  events 
were  tending ;  for  thus  early  did  he  familiarize  him 
self  with  the  principles  of  the  great  controversy  which 


PROFESSIONAL  CAREER  AND  MARRIAGE.    45 

was  to  set  the  new  continent  against  the  old,  and 
measure,  moreover,  the  capacity  of  his  fellow-leaders 
of  opinion,  among  whom  he  was  soon  to  be  seated. 
Patrick  Henry,  the  older  friend  of  Jefferson,  became 
from  that  very  hour  of  his  fame  the  lion  of  revolution 
in  Virginia  and  the  darling  of  his  fellow-citizens. 

Jefferson  had  been  talking  of  a  trip  to  Europe,  by 
way  of  a  last  polish  to  his  education ;  but  after  the 
Stamp  Act  (though  that  hateful  measure  was  soon 
repealed)  we  hear  no  more  of  it.  Mr.  Parton,  one  of 
his  biographers,  suggests  that,  with  his  moderate  for 
tune,  Jefferson  could  not  have  afforded  the  journey. 
However  that  may  be,  the  young  heir  extended  his 
knowledge  of  the  world  more  moderately,  in  the 
spring  of  1766,  by  a  tour  northward  as  far  as  New 
York  City,  leaving  for  the  first  time,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-three,  the  limits  of  his  native  colony.  He 
travelled  in  a  one-horse  chaise  ;  and  a  prime  object  of 
his  curious  quest  was  to  learn  inoculation  for  the  small 
pox  :  for  among  the  other  accomplishments  which 
Jefferson  acquired  in  life  was  that  of  a  very  tolerable 
surgeon  and  physician,  so  that  on  his  own  estate  he 
would  splinter  a  wound  in  an  emergency  or  set  a 
negro's  broken  leg.  At  Philadelphia  he  was  vac 
cinated  by  Dr.  Shippen ;  and  in  New  York  City  he 
formed  a  first  acquaintance  with  Elbridge  Gerry,  of 
Massachusetts,  then  a  young  traveller  like  himself, 
and  a  fellow-lodger  at  the  same  house,  but  yearning 
in  sympathy  for  the  coming  years  of  high  public 
achievement. 


46  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

Thus  qualified  for  the  activities  of  life  beyond  most 
young  Americans  of  this  colonial  age,  Jefferson  entered 
the  bar  under  favouring  auspices.  He  had  friends 
among  the  foremost  lawyers  in  the  Old  Dominion ;  he 
was  familiarly  known  at  the  capital  of  the  colony ;  and 
for  the  first  few  years  of  his  practice  at  least,  he 
relished  the  keen  contests  of  counsel  quite  as  heartily 
as  most  men  of  fortune  and  attainments.  Contrary, 
moreover,  to  the  impressions  which  so  many  have 
derived,  he  succeeded  well  in  the  strict  career  of  his 
profession ;  continuing,  in  fact,  a  figure  in  the  Virginia 
colonial  courts  until  about  the  time  they  were  closed 
by  the  Revolution.  He  practised  before  the  highest 
tribunals,  where  Patrick  Henry,  with  his  extremely 
short  preparation  for  the  bar,  could  hardly  have 
appeared  so  early.  Mr.  Randall,  a  most  trustworthy 
biographer,  produces  Jefferson's  own  fee-books  to 
show  that  he  was,  in  1767,  employed  in  not  less  than 
sixty-eight  cases  before  the  chief  court  of  the  province, 
increasing  his  work  from  that  date  to  1772,  when 
they  numbered  as  high  as  one  hundred  and  fifty-four ; 
after  which  date  the  figures  began  to  dimmish,  and 
in  1774  he  turned  over  his  law  business  to  his  kins 
man,  Edmund  Randolph,1  thenceforth  devoting  his 
energies  to  his  farm  and  the  public  service.  During 
that  brief  period  Jefferson  had  been  retained  besides 
in  many  other  cases  as  attorney  or  counsel ;  his  pro- 

1  The  same  Randolph  who  entered  Washington's  Cabinet 
as  Attorney-General,  and  left  it  under  a  cloud,  after  having 
succeeded  Jefferson  as  Secretary  of  State. 


PROFESSIONAL  CAREER  AND  MARRIAGE.    47 

fessional  profit  through  the  whole  term  of  active  prac 
tice  reaching  an  average  of  what  in  money  we  should 
now  denominate  three  thousand  dollars  a  year.  This 
was  doing  remarkably  well  for  a  young  lawyer  at  so 
eminent  a  bar;  for  the  rate  of  fees  was  then  very 
low ;  and  probably  only  a  few  of  the  older  and  long- 
recognized  luminaries  of  the  Virginia  bar,  such  as 
Wythe,  Pendleton,  Peyton  and  John  Randolph,  and 
Nicholas,  could  have'  made  a  better  showing,  —  men 
with  whom  he  was  often  associated  or  opposed  in 
controversy  during  this  period. 

It  is,  after  all,  a  sordid  scale  of  comparison,  though 
a  very  common  one,  which  gauges  the  abilities  of 
conspicuous  barristers  by  their  fees,  thus  strengthening 
the  popular  impression,  which  is  usually  formed  in 
envious  ignorance  of  such  matters,  that  lawyers  are 
mercenaries  of  human  knowledge,  grasping  all  they 
can  get.  No  profession  has  furnished  such  personal 
sacrifices  for  the  public  good  as  that  of  the  law ;  and 
of  that  sacrificing  number  was  Jefferson.  His  chief 
ability  and  his  strongest  inclinations  as  a  professional 
man  lay  in  the  less  lucrative  lines  allied  to  legislation. 
He  became  successful,  and  eminently  so,  as  a  codifier 
and  reviser  of  statutes,  and  a  reformer  of  practice  in 
the  courts.  Such  work  requires,  besides  erudition 
and  skill  in  minute  details,  breadth  of  vision  and  a 
mastery  of  clear  expression.  In  all  such  qualities 
Jefferson  showed  supereminence ;  and  his  revision  of 
the  laws  of  Virginia,  his  reports  of  decisions,  his  notes 
on  Virginia,  his  opinions  on  law  questions  while  Secre- 


48  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

tary  of  State,  and  his  handling  of  various  matters 
while  President,  —  such  as  the  New  Orleans  Batture 
case,  —  all  show  the  calibre,  not  of  a  technical  prac 
titioner  alone,  with  the  routine  of  the  courts  at  his 
fingers'  ends,  but  of  one  with  that  broader  conception 
of  laws  and  human  relations  which,  under  a  Roman 
system  at  least,  is  wont  to  dignify  him  with  the  title 
of  jurist. 

But  Jefferson,  we  imagine,  though  taking  up  his 
vocation  with  great  ardour,  as  most  young  lawyers  do, 
had  no  sustained  relish  for  the  wages  of  litigiousness. 
His  parallel  studies,  moreover,  and  the  bent  of  his 
whole  genius,  tended  rather  in  the  direction  of  estab 
lishing  new  institutions  than  in  groping  over  the 
meshes  of  old  ones.  He  disliked  the  continuous 
chess-play  of  intellects,  where  victory  is  the  prime  ob 
ject  of  pursuit ;  for  no  case  could  interest  him  greatly 
unless  just  apparently  upon  its  merits.  Tangled 
titles  and  inheritances,  and  imprudent  British  liabili 
ties  besides,  made  the  Virginia  gentry  of  that  day  a 
choice  vintage  among  professional  clients.  It  is  in 
deed  amazing  to  observe  how  much  litigation  this 
province  bore  in  proportion  to  its  wealth  and  popu 
lation,  with  a  judicial  system  which  borrowed  too 
closely  from  the  mother  country.  A  lawyer  like  Jef 
ferson  must  have  wished  to  prune  away  some  of  the 
excrescences,  to  lop  off  items  of  fees  and  taxable 
costs,  to  reduce  artificial  pleadings,  all  of  which  to  his 
thorough-paced  brethren  were  as  sacred  almost  by 
precedent  as  the  fountain  of  justice.  He  practised 


PROFESSIONAL  CAREER  AND  MARRIAGE.    49 

sedulously  at  first  among  rich  fellow-counsel,  for  he 
needed  the  income ;  but  as  soon  as  he  felt  himself 
independent  enough  to  pursue  more  benevolent  aims, 
he  transferred  his  business  once  and  for  all.  A  man 
may  be  a  great  lawyer  in  the  true  sense  of  the  term 
without  remaining  a  constant  practitioner. 

Jefferson's  rapid  rise  in  the  profession  during  his 
seven  years  of  active  practice  was  the  more  phenom 
enal,  since  he  was  never  renowned  for  his  oratory. 
The  same  may  be  said  of  his  success  in  public  life. 
He  was  never  brilliant  in  forensic  or  popular  discus 
sion.  He  shone  rather  on  paper  and  in  private  con 
versation.  As  an  advocate  he  developed  a  difficulty 
with  his  voice,  which  would  become  husky  and  inar 
ticulate  after  he  had  spoken  for  a  little  while.  So, 
too,  his  habits  of  mathematical  conciseness,  both  in 
substance  and  expression,  in  thought  and  statement, 
made  all  extended  controversy  over  a  subject  where 
the  points  had  once  been  fully  stated  on  each  side  — 
and  particularly  all  fluency  of  utterance  for  mere 
effect — quite  wearisome  to  him.  But  he  appreciated 
all  truly  great  oratory  on  great  occasions ;  and  in 
essentials  he  showed  himself  an  able  and  accom 
plished,  and  moreover  a  sagacious  and  discriminating 
lawyer.  In  the  palmy  days  of  his  practice  there  is 
no  question  that  some  of  the  foremost  of  the  patrician 
families  of  the  colony,  together  with  royal  councillors 
and  officers  of  the  Crown,  figured  upon  the  list  of  his 
clients.  In  Virginia  the  practice  of  the  law  was  at 
this  colonial  era  a  highly  aristocratic  one,  and  for  that 
4 


50  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

very  reason,  perhaps,  his  soul  rebelled  secretly  against 
it.  Wythe  was  a  man  of  independent  circumstances ; 
Jefferson  nearly  so  ;  and  notwithstanding  the  peculiar 
circumstances  of  Patrick  Henry's  admission,  which  we 
have  noticed,  the  usual  standard  of  training  and  quali 
fications  at  the  Virginia  bar  appears  to  have  been  an 
exacting  one.  In  every  respect  but  padding  out  a 
bad  cause  with  abundant  verbiage  and  having  the  gift 
of  eloquence  at  command,  Jefferson  managed  his 
cases  skilfully ;  and  even  when  on  his  feet  he  was  not 
confused,  as  contemporaries  recall  him,  nor  driven 
from  his  habitual  serenity  and  hopefulness  of  temper. 
No  man  who  measured  intellects  with  him  knew 
better  how  to  use  legal  authorities  and  estimate  the 
force  and  limitation  of  a  precedent.  Learnedness 
in  the  law  makes  no  man  great  who  cannot  subject 
immediate  facts  to  the  test  of  fundamental  principles ; 
and  in  such  processes  Jefferson  was  easily  proficient, 
for  he  saw  the  relations  of  things  from  many  sides, 
and  was  strongly  sympathetic.  His  grandson  asked 
an  old  man  who  in  his  youth  had  often  heard  the 
great  leader  of  Democracy  make  arguments  in  court, 
how  he  ranked  as  an  advocate.  "  Well,"  replied  the 
old  man,  "  it  is  hard  to  tell,  because  he  always  took 
the  right  side."  Jefferson's  temperament  must  have 
needed  a  lawsuit  he  really  believed  in ;  and  to  such 
he  would  do  full  justice.  Legislation  and  legislative 
reform  interested  him,  nevertheless,  with  their  humane 
and  comprehensive  sweep,  more  intensely,  on  the 
whole,  than  any  mere  individual  combat  of  plaintiff 


PROFESSIONAL  CAREER  AND  MARRIAGE.     51 

and  defendant.      And  he  once  defined  a  lawyer 

meaning,  of  course,  one  of  the  hackneyed  and  mer 
cantile  kind  —  as  a  person  whose  trade  it  is  to  contest 
everything,  concede  nothing,  and  talk  by  the  hour. 

Jefferson  was  chosen  in  1769  a  representative  of 
his  county  of  Albemarle  in  the  House  of  Burgesses. 
Law  and  politics  may  be  made  congenial  in  combi-  ; 
nation  when  the  people  readily  select  their  foremost  ' 
men  to  represent  them.  Such  was  the  case  in  all  the 
American  colonies  at  the  period  we  are  considering  ; 
and  throughout  the  South  it  has  usually  remained  so. 
But  one  cannot  serve  long  two  such  exacting  masters 
in  earnest  without  sacrificing  in  the  one  direction  or 
in  the  other.  Jefferson  accepted  his  public  trust 
seriously  from  the  very  commencement.  He  was 
willing  that  of  the  two  pursuits  his  court  practice 
should  be  the  sufferer ;  for,  as  he  was  not  ashamed  to 
confess,  he  valued  earnestly  the  esteem  and  applause 
of  his  fellow-men.  "When  I  first  entered  on  the 
stage  of  public  life,"  he  wrote  long  afterward,  "I 
came  to  a  resolution  never  to  engage,  while  in  public 
life,  in  any  kind  of  enterprise  for  the  improvement 
of  my  fortune,  nor  to  wear  any  other  character  than 
that  of  a  farmer.  I  have  never  departed  from  it  in 
a  single  instance." 

^  The  colonial  troubles  that  were  culminating  with 
Great  Britain  made  this  a  grand  season  of  opportunity 
for  young  statesmanship.  The  House  of  Burgesses 
in  this  eldest  of  the  old  thirteen  colonies  convened 


52  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

after  due  interval  in  May,  1769.  It  was  the  first 
session  called  by  Lord  Botetourt,  the  new  successor 
of  Jefferson's  friend,  Governor  Fauquier,  who  had 
now  been  dead  for  two  years.  King  George  and  his 
ministry  held  to  the  stubborn  purpose  of  taxing  the 
American  colonies ;  the  Stamp  Act  had  been  repealed  ; 
but  the  next  effort  in  the  programme,  as  the  Crown 
explained  to  Parliament,  was  "  to  raise  a  revenue 
from  the  colonies  without  giving  them  any  offence." 
Instead  of  that  obnoxious  imposition,  in  other  words, 
which  had  come  home  to  American  subjects  as  a  per 
sonal  humiliation  over  each  individual  transaction,  a 
levy  on  a  few  imported  articles,  such  as  glass,  tea, 
and  paper,  was  now  to  be  attempted  through  the 
custom-house,  its  burden  being  delicately  diffused  by 
such  means  through  the  usual  channels  of  consump 
tion.  A  sapient  change  in  theory ;  but  it  was  the 
principle  of  arbitrary  taxation,  and  not  the  method, 
that  America  had  objected  to. 

In  a  colonial  legislature  were  to  be  witnessed  many 
of  the  scenes  of  the  home  Parliament  in  miniature. 
Among  the  ceremonial  forms  usual  at  this  period  was 
that  of  resolutions  and  an  address,  at  the  outset  of 
business,  in  response  to  the  opening  speech  of  the 
king's  viceregent.  Polished  courtesies  were  in  order 
on  this  new  Virginia  occasion ;  and  Jefferson,  brought 
forward  by  his  personal  friends  among  the  older 
members,  who  knew  something  of  his  skill  with  the 
pen,  encountered  upon  his  entrance  to  public  life  a 
compliment  and  a  rebuff  together.  The  resolutions 


PROFESSIONAL  CAREER  AND  MARRIAGE.     53 

customary,  as  heads  for  an  address,  were  drawn  by 
him  and  presented,  and  the  House  of  Burgesses  ac 
cepted  them.  But  when  placed  on  the  committee 
with  Pendleton,  Nicholas,  and  others,  to  prepare  an 
address,  his  seniors,  much  to  his  chagrin,  put  aside 
the  draft  which  he  had  diligently  worked  upon,  find 
ing  it  too  terse  to  please  them,  and  adopted  one  more 
florid  and  resonant,  which  Nicholas  furnished  to 
order.  Many  a  statesman  has  begun  his  distinguished 
career  with  a  personal  mortification,  such  as  posterity 
might  the  least  have  expected  to  hear  recounted. 

Colonel  Washington,  of  Braddock's  Field  renown, 
first  chosen  to  the  Burgesses  when  Braddock's  Field 
was  fresh,  had  returned  to  this  House,  modest  and 
taciturn  of  speech,  but  impressive  in  action.  Richard 
Henry  Lee,  Patrick  Henry,  and  Peyton  and  Richard 
Randolph  were  also  in  their  accustomed  seats,  with 
Nicholas  and  Gary  besides.  Peyton  Randolph  was  the 
unanimous  choice  for  Speaker,  an  office  he  had  filled 
before,  and  was  sure  to  fill  again,  for  he  presided  with 
admirable  dignity.  Despite  the  opening  interchange 
of  cordial  civilities,  the  Burgesses  soon  struck  upon  a 
reef.  Counter  resolutions  on  Virginia's  behalf  met 
those  which  the  British  Parliament  had  lately  passed 
in  compliance  with  the  king's  new  policy  of  experi 
menting  upon  American  consumption ;  and  the  Bur 
gesses  boldly  reasserted  the  exclusive  right  of  the 
colonies  to  tax  themselves  in  their  own  legislatures. 
Massachusetts  was  oppressed,  and  the  oppression  of 
one  colony  was  declared  the  oppression  of  all.  Lord 


54  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

Botetourt,  not  an  unamiable  man  in  his  politics,  pro 
ceeded  promptly  to  do  as  his  king  desired ;  to  rebuke 
such  disloyal  utterances,  he  dissolved  the  House  with 
out  waiting  even  to  be  officially  notified  of  its  resolu 
tions.  But  the  members  met  the  next  day  in  the 
long  room  of  the  tavern  at  Williamsburg,  and  formed 
a  non-importation  league  among  themselves,  to  last 
as  long  as  Parliament  should  insist  upon  its  new  leg 
islation  for  raising  a  revenue  in  America  without 
American  consent.  Among  the  signers  to  this  instru 
ment  of  association  were  Jefferson  and  Washington. 
The  members  of  the  dissolved  House  then  returned 
to  their  several  counties,  and  were  all  re-elected  ex 
cept  some  of  the  very  few  who  had  withheld  their 
signatures. 

Thus  did  the  pulse  of  Virginia  beat  in  strong  uni 
son  with  the  spirit  of  common  resistance  to  royal 
oppression,  whose  heaviest  hand  was  laid  upon  the 
distant  colony  of  Massachusetts.  But  the  four  years 
which  followed  that  spirited  session  of  1769  were  in 
the  Chesapeake  region  years  of  popular  lull  and  in 
activity.  Jefferson  was  now  in  the  full  tide  of  his 
professional  practice,  and  much  absorbed  in  private 
concerns  ;  for  public  life  as  yet  occupied  but  a  trifling 
share  of  his  attention. 

In  February,  1770,  the  dwelling-house  at  Shadwell, 
in  which  he  was  born,  and  where  he  had  continued  to 
reside  with  his  mother,  his  unmarried  sisters,  and  little 
brother,  caught  fire,  and  was  burned  to  the  ground.  He 


PROFESSIONAL  CAREER  AND  MARRIAGE.     55 

himself  was  absent  when  the  accident  occurred.  A  fire, 
once  under  headway  in  such  a  remote  hamlet,  usually 
did  clean  work,  and  there  was  of  course  no  insurance 
in  those  days  to  indemnify.  All  of  Jefferson's  earlier 
papers,  in  consequence,  and  almost  every  book  he 
owned,  perished  in  the  flames  ;  though,  as  the  sable 
messenger  from  Shadwell  assured  his  master  with  a 
sheepish  grin  when  he  brought  the  bad  news,  his 
fiddle  was  saved.  Jefferson,  fortunately,  had  already 
begun  the  erection  of  a  new  and  statelier  mansion  for 
l-imself  on  the  summit  of  his  favourite  Monticello. 
Thither  he  moved  soon  after  the  fire,  occupying  for 
some  time  a  small  building  with  a  single  room,  which 
served  later  as  one  of  the  pavilions.  The  rest  of  his 
family  took  temporary  shelter  in  an  overseer's  house 
at  Shadwell;  and  the  old  paternal  homestead  was 
never  rebuilt.  It  must  have  been  hard  work,  and 
costly  too,  to  rear  an  edifice  on  Monticello's  isolated 
crest.  The  owner  had  to  superintend  the  work  as 
his  own  architect,  —  changing  the  plans  from  time  to 
time,  as  new  ideas  would  occur  to  him,  —  and  to  no 
slight  extent  as  his  own  builder  besides,  or  rather  as 
the  trainer  and  personal  director  of  a  few  dull-witted 
labourers,  mostly  black,  who  had  not  one  scintilla  of 
skill.  With  bricks  to  be  burned  and  lumber  to  be 
dressed  about  the  premises,  —  with  the  rudest  tools 
and  equipments  ordered  from  Williamsburg,  and  even 
such  simple  furnishings  as  window-sashes  brought  by  a 
sluggish  sailing-vessel  all  the  way  from  London,  —  it 
was  not  strange  that  the  work  of  erection  went  on 


56  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

slowly  aryjr  fitfully.  Gradually  developing  year  by 
year,  like  Jefferson  himself,  and  affected  by  the  vicis 
situdes  of  a  public  career  that  sent  him  journeying  to 
Europe  and  back  again,  Monticello  shaped  itself  by 
degrees  into  the  image  and  embodiment  of  his  own 
maturing  character.  Into  this  stately  mansion  on  the 
heights,  with  its  peaceful  pleasure-dome,  its  dainty 
vistas,  and  its  horizon  of  undulating  landscape,  en 
tered  little  by  little  his  whole  artistic  spirit,  the  soul 
of  his  young  romance  and  tender  sentiment,  and 
withal  a  liberal  share  of  his  entire  fortune. 

Hither  was  it  that  Jefferson  brought  his  beautiful 
bride  immediately  after  the  wedding  festivities  of 
New  Year's,  1772,  at  her  father's  house,  journey 
ing  with  her  for  many  miles  in  the  dead  of  winter, 
through  powdery  snow-drifts,  quite  unusual  in  that 
latitude ;  and  after  taking  the  last  stretch  on  horse 
back  together,  as  they  found  themselves  compelled  to 
do,  they  reached  the  pavilion  (the  only  part  of  the 
house  then  habitable)  late  at  night,  with  the  fires  all 
out,  the  servants  in  their  distant  quarters,  and  only  a 
half-emptied  bottle  of  wine  on  the  shelf  to  serve  for 
their  needful  repast  and  fuel.  Jefferson's  tell-tale 
account-book  discloses  how  much  he  paid  the  clergy 
man  and  the  musicians  when  that  nuptial  knot  was  tied  ; 
but  of  the  courtship  which  preceded  the  ceremony  we 
know  very  little,  except  that  the  violin  which  was  saved 
from  Shadwell's  ruins  performed  its  last  good  service, 
and  in  dulcet  alliance  with  her  own  harpsichord  car 
ried  the  fair  one's  heart  against  all  rivals.  Martha 


PROFESSIONAL  CAREER  AND  MARRIAGE.    57 

Skelton,  a  young  widow  of  twenty-three  when  Jeffer 
son  married  her,  was  a  graceful  and  attractive  woman, 
well-educated  for  her  day,  an  accomplished  household 
provider,  and,  like  her  lover,  very  fond  of  music. 
Her  father,  John  Wayles,  whose  estate  in  Charles- 
City  County  was  proudly  styled  "The  Forest,"  had 
figured  long  among  the  affluent  gentry  of  Virginia's 
legal  profession;  and,  dying  soon  after  the  present 
marriage,  he  left  an  estate  which,  when  divided  up, 
gave  to  Martha,  his  youngest  daughter,  a  portion 
almost  equal  to  her  new  husband's  fortune,  thus 
doubling  the  ease  of  their  married  circumstances. 
But  slaves  and  landed  estates  in  Virginia  were  of 
deceptive  value ;  and  in  selling  off  property  of  his 
own  to  pay  the  share  of  debt  with  which  his  wife's 
inheritance  came  incumbered,  Jefferson  involved  his 
own  patrimony,  and  the  various  transactions  in  paper 
money  which  followed,  during  a  long  period  of  de 
preciation  in  the  course  of  our  Revolutionary  War, 
left  him  comparatively  poor. 

Jefferson,  if  not  the  wisest  of  calculators  in  private 
money  matters,  was  a  better  one,  at  any  rate,  than  the 
average  Virginian  householder,  whose  ambition  used 
to  be,  as  the  saying  went,  to  add  to  his  estate  a  child 
and  a  new  tract  of  land  year  by  year.  American  in 
vestments  and  financiering  were  mostly  confined  in 
those  days  to  one's  own  colony  ;  and  of  all  these 
American  colonies  Virginia  has  learned  the  saddest 
lesson  in  political  economy.  For  here  existed  no 
great  middle  class  of  money-makers,  no  manufactures, 


5§  THOMAS   JEFFERSON. 

no  commerce,  no  large  towns,  no  citizen  capitalists 
embarked  in  trade  and  the  acquisition  of  personal 
wealth.  Public  spirit  went  into  politics,  despising 
business.  Nor  was  it  enough  that  rich  soil  here  ran 
to  waste  through  exhausting  tobacco  crops  and  un 
systematic  cultivation  :  but  Virginia  planters,  as  high- 
souled  and  hospitable  a  race  as  ever  breathed,  were 
preyed  upon  by  middlemen  and  transporters  when 
sending  their  produce  to  the  distant  British  market ; 
paying  heavy  prices,  in  addition,  for  the  needful  com 
modities  which  came  back  to  them  in  exchange. 
Jefferson  was  one  of  the  rare  Virginians  who  studied 
his  figures  and  made  careful  estimates.  He  took 
advice  from  every  one,  and  managed  his  acres,  as  long 
as  he  could  supervise  them  in  person,  so  as  to  rotate 
his  crops,  and  make  one  farm  produce  while  others 
were  resting ;  he  experimented  constantly,  so  that  no 
good  idea  should  escape  him.  He  cultivated  wheat, 
and  not  tobacco.  He  invested  little  or  nothing  in 
slave  labour,  beyond  keeping  up  such  families  as  came 
to  him  by  inheritance  or  marriage ;  and  he  was  clear 
sighted  beyond  his  times  concerning  the  economic 
disadvantages  of  the  prevailing  system,  as  well  as  its 
social  ills  and  inhumanity.  One  of  his  earliest  efforts 
in  the  House  of  Burgesses,  on  entering  public  life, 
was  the  introduction  of  a  bill  to  give  owners  the  right, 
which  the  laws  did  not  then  concede,  of  manumitting 
their  slaves.  It  was  defeated ;  nor  was  such  a  right 
ever  conferred  by  Virginian  legislation,  in  fact,  until 
the  British  yoke  was  fairly  shaken  off,  for  British 


PROFESSIONAL  CAREER  AND  MARRIAGE.     59 

cupidity  at  this  period  favoured  negro  slavery  in  all 
the  staple-raising  colonies  of  America. 

Many  have  assumed  that  Jefferson  was  a  visionary 
in  common  affairs  because  he  was  a  philosopher ;  and 
political  enemies  told  absurdly  ridiculous  stories  of 
him  all  his  life,  which  had  no  foundation.  He  was 
not  a  theorist,  but  an  experimenter;  and  all  his 
experiments  he  conducted  in  a  practical  direction, 
with  a  close  study  of  results.  So  long  as  he  had 
leisure  for  devoting  himself  to  his  own  private  affairs, 
he  prospered  pecuniarily.  Stock -jobbing,  of  course, 
and  the  monetary  markets,  he  never  meddled  with. 
Without  any  other  principle  of  investment  than  that 
which  consists  of  joining  acres  to  acres  in  his  own 
colony  and  State,  he  contrived  before  he  was  thirty 
years  old  to  more  than  double  the  handsome  estate 
he  had  derived  from  his  father ;  and  his  regular  re 
ceipts  yielded  about  five  thousand  dollars  a  year,  of 
which  three  fifths  came  from  his  profession.  From 
nineteen  hundred  acres,  he  became  the  proprietor  of 
five  thousand  acres  all  paid  for.  Such  were  his  cir 
cumstances  when  he  married  ;  and  the  losses  endured 
later  by  discharging  the  incumbrances  on  his  wife's 
inheritance  were  in  a  large  sense  a  patriotic  sacrifice. 
His  economies  at  this  same  period  of  life  were  quite 
as  striking  as  his  power  to  accumulate.  "  He  carried 
his  accomplished  and  wealthy  wife,"  says  Randall, 
"  to  a  residence  which  would  not  be  too  large  or  too 
elegant  in  any  particular  for  the  porter's  lodge  of  a 


60  THOMAS  JEFFERSON, 

modern  fine  establishment.  He  drove  as  yet  but  two 
horses  and  a  phaeton,  though  the  grandees  drove  six, 
and  the  middlemen  four."  And  if,  with  his  head  full 
of  Ossian,  Pope's  grotto,  his  own  early  bereavements, 
and  youthful  thoughts  of  marriage,  we  find  him 
devising  some  very  fanciful  improvements  for  his 
grounds,  he,  at  all  events,  never  carried  them  out. 
Jefferson's  first  married  years  were  tranquil  and 
delightful,  and  it  is  a  pleasure  to  trace  his  domestic 
course  of  life,  through  the  pages  of  his  garden-book, 
as  he  sat  watching  the  work  which  went  on  about  him, 
or  summing  up  the  results  of  his  solitary  morning 
rides.  We  see  him  generalizing  with  his  pen  on  the 
loads  brought  by  a  workman's  wheelbarrow,  or  draw 
ing  up  careful  contracts  for  his  overseers,  with  the 
humane  stipulation  inserted  that  they  shall  never 
bleed  a  negro.  In  1772  Martha  was  born,  the  eldest 
child  of  his  happy  marriage.  She  lived  a  long  and 
healthy  life,  and  together  with  one  other  daughter 
best  known  as  Maria,  who  also  married  in  due  time, 
preserved  a  noble  line  from  extinction.  But  Jefferson 
was  unfortunate  in  his  offspring;  and  out  of  six 
children  that  were  born  to  him,  five  of  whom  were 
girls,  only  these  two  survived  even  the  period  of  nur 
ture.  The  youngest  daughter  of  them  all,  who  lived 
two  years,  was  of  exquisite  fibre,  ethereal  more  than 
earthly;  she  was  fond  of  music,  and  so  delicately 
attuned,  as  tradition  relates,  that  a  false  note  brought 
tears  to  her  eyes. 


MORNING   OF  REVOLUTION.  6 1 


CHAPTER   IV. 

MORNING   OF   REVOLUTION. 
I773-I775- 

IN  revolutionary  times  each  year  grows  into  an  epoch, 
and  young  men  reach  rapidly  the  stature  of  giants. 
The  burning  in  Narragansett  Bay  of  the  "  Gaspee," 
that  British  naval  vessel  whose  officers  had  been  so 
intolerably  severe  in  enforcing  the  obnoxious  revenue 
laws  against  our  colonists,  provoked  Parliament  to  a 
singular  retaliation.  Death  was  denounced  against 
all  who  should  presume  henceforth  to  molest  in  any 
manner  the  king's  craft  or  those  who  manned  them. 
Not  they  alone,  from  admiral  to  midshipman,  who 
wore  the  gilt  buttons  as  symbols  of  British  sovereignty, 
but  oaken  ribs,  the  deck,  the  ropes,  and  rigging  of  a 
royal  frigate  were  thereby  declared  as  inviolate  to  the 
profane  touch  of  the  king's  subjects  as  the  very  ark 
of  the  Israelites.  A  court  of  inquiry  was  furthermore 
ordered  in  Rhode  Island  for  the  "  Gaspee  "  offenders, 
with  power  to  send  them  to  England  for  trial  and 
sentence. 

This  new  denouncement  against  colonial  rights, 
which  grew  out  of  the  Rhode  Island  incident,  was 
even  more  alarming  than  the  imposition  of  taxes 
without  representative  consent;  for  that  took  only 


62  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

one's  property  from  him  arbitrarily,  while  this  exposed 
his  liberty  and  his  very  life  to  hazard,  regardless  of 
the  time-honoured  safeguards  of  our  criminal  law.  In 
Virginia  the  feeling  against  deportation  to  the  mother 
country  for  trial  was  so  intense  and  strong  that  when 
the  House  of  Burgesses  reassembled  in  1773,  Henry, 
Lee,  Jefferson,  and  others  held  a  conference,  which 
resulted  in  resolutions  proposing  a  Committee  of  Cor 
respondence  and  Inquiry,  to  concert  with  the  other 
colonies.1 

Dabney  Carr,  of  whose  youthful  relationship  with 
Jefferson  we  have  spoken,  moved  these  resolutions 
with  an  earnest  speech  on  the  i2th  of  March;2  they 
were  his  last  tribute  to  the  patriot  cause,  for  he  died 
soon  after.  With  the  eloquent  support  of  Patrick 
Henry  and  Richard  Henry  Lee,  they  passed  by  a  vote 

1  As  proposed  in  Virginia,  the  primary  object  of  such  a 
committee  was  to  obtain  and  disseminate  authentic  informa 
tion,  at  the  earliest  moment,  of  hostile  acts  and  proceedings  of 
Parliament  and  the  British  Crown;  co-operation  in  conse 
quence  of  such  information  being,  of  course,  secondary.  Jef 
ferson  always  claimed  for  Virginia  the  honour  of  originating 
those  famous  Committees  of  Correspondence  between  the  legis 
latures  of  the  different  colonies  which  did  so  much  to  harmonize 
and  consolidate  American  resistance.  The  record  shows,  how 
ever,  that  the  Massachusetts  Provincial  Assembly  had  appointed 
such  a  committee  as  early  as  1770.  But  the  work  of  the  Mas 
sachusetts  Committee,  which  was  peculiar,  appears  to  have 
attracted  little  notice  in  the  other  colonies,  while  Virginia's 
proposal,  in  1773,  led  directly  to  the  Revolution. 

'2  At  the  request,  it  is  said,  of  his  friend  and  brother-in-law 
Jefferson,  who  had  been  asked  to  present  them, 


MORNING  OF    REVOLUTION.  63 

nearly  unanimous.  Lord  Dunmore,  who  had  now 
succeeded  Lord  Botetourt  as  Governor,  dissolved  the 
Burgesses  immediately,  after  his  predecessor's  ex 
ample.  But  Virginia's  Committee  of  Correspondence 
had  already  been  selected,  with  Peyton  Randolph  at 
the  head  and  Jefferson  at  the  foot ;  it  met  the  very 
next  day,  and  sent  circulars  to  all  the  other  colonial 
legislatures  of  America,  asking  them  to  constitute 
similar  committees ;  and  thus  was  co-operative  revo 
lution  set  in  motion. 

The  news  of  the  Boston  Port  Bill  reached  the  re 
assembled  Burgesses  of  Virginia  at  the  time  of  its 
spring  session  in  1774.  Patrick  Henry  was  by  this 
time  the  great  popular  leader  of  the  colony,  and  the 
sceptre  of  legislation  passed  speedily  from  the  con 
servatives  of  the  Old  Dominion,  whose  names  had 
stood  for  lineage  and  respectability,  —  men  like  the 
Pendletons,  the  Elands,  and  the  Randolphs,  —  to  a 
band  of  bolder  spirits,  chief  among  whom  were  the 
two  Lees,  Mason,  Jefferson,  and  Henry  himself.  Such 
is  the  usual  course  in  popular  revolutions ;  the  old 
set  ushers  in  with  dignity,  but  the  new  set  gives  the 
impulse.  Of  all  the  thirteen  colonies,  Massachusetts 
led  in  active  rebellion,  for  her  oppression  from  the 
Crown  was  greatest ;  but  to  Virginia's  honour  it  should 
be  remembered  that,  with  little  of  royal  persecution  to 
complain  of  on  her  own  behalf,  she  led  in  the  gener 
ous  assertion,  without  which  unity  and  a  successful 
resistance  would  have  been  scarcely  possible,  that 
any  attack  by  royalty  on  the  rights  of  one  American 


64  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

colony  was  an  attack  upon  them  all.  In  this  becom 
ing  spirit  did  the  Virginia  House  of  Burgesses  adopt 
a  resolution  which  set  the  first  day  of  June,  when 
Boston  was  to  be  handcuffed  and  fettered  for  a 
warning  example,  as  a  day  of  fasting,  humiliation, 
and  prayer.  Once  more  did  the  royal  governor 
punish  the  disloyal  reflection  upon  his  sovereign  by 
dissolving  the  Assembly ;  this  time  with  a  curt  mes 
sage  of  half-a-dozen  lines.  The  dispersed  legislators 
met  once  more  in  the  Apollo  room  of  the  tavern ; 
and  reaffirming  their  principle  that  the  oppression  of 
one  of  these  colonies  was  the  oppression  of  all,  ad 
vised  their  Committee  of  Correspondence  to  confer 
with  those  of  the  other  colonies  as  to  the  expediency 
of  holding  a  general  annual  Congress.  They  further 
agreed  that  a  convention  should  be  held  at  Williams- 
burg,  on  the  ist  of  August,  to  ascertain  the  result  of 
this  inquiry,  and  if  opinion  should  appear  favourable, 
to  appoint  their  own  delegates  to  such  a  Congress. 

All  this  was  in  May ;  and  so  fairly  did  the  clergy 
of  these  colonies  bear  their  patriotic  part,  that  the 
day  when  the  Boston  Port  Bill  went  into  effect  was 
a  day  that  nerved  brave  souls  to  action.  Well  may 
the  sovereign  power  that  punishes  unmercifully  dread 
the  influence  of  the  spectacle  on  those  who  witness 
it  afar  off  with  indignant  pity.  The  Williamsburg 
Convention,  like  those  of  like  pattern  in  other  colo 
nies,  led  to  the  contemplated  action.  Jefferson  was 
chosen  to  it  by  the  freemen  of  Albemarle,  whose 
county  meeting  asserted  the  inherent  right  of  self- 


MORNING   OF  REVOLUTION.  6$ 

government  so  defiantly,  in  advance  of  all  others,  that 
the  source  of  its  inspiration  can  hardly  be  doubted. 
A  sudden  sickness  prevented  our  young  delegate 
from  presenting  his  credentials  at  the  capital  among 
the  rest ;  but  he  sent  forward  to  his  colleagues  two 
copies  of  an  instrument  which  he  had  hastily  pre 
pared,  whose  sentiments,  as  he  hoped,  would  be 
those  of  the  Convention  in  instructing  its  delegates 
to  Congress.  The  language  was  bold  and  startling ; 
too  much  so,  indeed,  to  please  the  majority  at  Wil- 
liamsburg;  for  the  unequal  pace  with  which  men 
moved  in  the  same  patriotic  direction  required  no 
little  prudence,  as  Jefferson  soon  found  out,  to  keep 
front  and  rear  together.  Peyton  Randolph,  the 
chairman  of  the  Convention,  laid  his  copy  on  the 
table  of  that  body ;  the  other  copy,  sent  to  Patrick 
Henry,  Jefferson  never  heard  from.  Discarded  si 
lently,  as  a  basis  of  instructions,  the  Convention,  nev 
ertheless,  had  the  paper  printed  in  pamphlet  form, 
as  a  "  Summary  View."  In  England,  with  some  in 
terpolations  by  Edmund  Burke,  it  was  widely  read 
and  circulated ;  and  the  honour  of  a  document  so 
revolutionary  in  its  ideas  procured  Jefferson's  name 
an  insertion  among  the  proscriptions  contained  in  a 
bill  of  attainder,  which  Parliament  finally  suppressed. 

If  any  one  still  questions  whether  Jefferson  could 

have  been  author  of  the  great  Declaration  of  1776, 

let  him  study  the  recital  of  fundamental  rights  in   this 

earlier  and  more  impassioned  production.     The   in- 

5 


66  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

structions  adopted  by  the  Williamsburg  Convention 
were  quite  brief  in  comparison  with  those  which  this 
young  rebel  had  drawn  up,  and  doubtless  served 
better  their  immediate  purpose,  being  expressive  of 
dutiful  allegiance  to  the  king,  and  fastening  their 
complaints  diplomatically  upon  the  acts  attempted  in 
Massachusetts  by  General  Gage,  that  "  despotic  vice 
roy."  They  left  the  king  free  to  make  disavowal  of  his 
agent's  acts.  Jefferson's  document,  on  the  contrary, 
ranged  over  the  justifying  ideas  of  revolution,  as 
though  to  lead  his  countrymen  to  resistance.  These 
colonies,  as  it  argued,  were  already  rightfully  inde 
pendent  of  Great  Britain,  since  subjects  who  emi 
grated  to  a  new  country,  there  to  establish  new 
societies  of  their  6wn,  possessed  the  natural  right  of 
expatriation  for  themselves  and  their  posterity.  It 
recounted  the  whole  story  of  wrongs  inflicted  by  Brit 
ish  "  usurped  power  "  to  keep  these  colonies  tributary. 
And  to  the  headstrong  king  advice  was  given  in  stinging 
words,  as  from  one  free-born  citizen  to  another.  "  Let 
those  flatter  who  fear ;  it  is  not  an  American  art.  .  .  . 
Open  your  breast,  Sire,  to  liberal  and  expanded 
thought.  Let  not  the  name  of  George  the  Third  be 
a  blot  on  the  page  of  history.  .  .  .  The  great  prin 
ciples  of  right  and  wrong  are  legible  to  every  reader ; 
to  pursue  them  requires  not  the  aid  of  many  coun 
sellors.  The  whole  art  of  government  consists  in 
the  art  of  being  honest.  Only  aim  to  do  your  duty, 
and  mankind  will  give  you  credit  where  you  fail." 
Bold  language  this,  in  the  seventh  decade  of  the 


MORNING  OF  REVOLUTION.  67 

eighteenth  century,  for  a  liege  subject  and  a  com 
moner's  son  to  hold  toward  his  sovereign.  The 
illusion  of  divinity  in  kings  was  fading  in  our  hemi 
sphere  before  America  drew  the  sword. 

The  Williamsburg  Convention  of  1774  was  the  germ 
of  revolutionary  government  in  Virginia.  General 
delegates  to  a  Continental  Assembly  were  chosen  with 
the  concurrence  of  Committees  of  Correspondence  in 
the  other  colonies.  Philadelphia  was  the  place,  and 
September  5  the  date  fixed  upon  for  the  first  an 
nual  Congress  of  these  colonies.  Virginia's  delegates 
made  a  strong  list  in  combination  :  Peyton  Randolph, 
Richard  Henry  Lee,  George  Washington,  Patrick 
Henry,  Richard  Bland,  Benjamin  Harrison,  and  Ed 
mund  Pendleton. 

Jefferson's  name  was  not  on  this  earliest  roll.  Pru 
dential  and  politic  reasons  must  be  balanced  in  making 
up  seven  such  delegates  at  large  for  the  first  time. 
Jefferson,  moreover,  though  of  precocious  influence  as 
a  statesman,  still  ranked  among  the  youngest.  It 
was  the  tide-water  region  which  had  the  great  tradi 
tional  hold  upon  Virginians  when  public  influence 
was  concerned ;  and  Patrick  Henry,  whose  home  was 
about  midway  towards  the  Blue  Ridge,  represented 
the  constituency  whose  location  was  farthest  to  the 
westward.  Without  Patrick  Henry,  .certainly,  no  roll 
of  Virginia  names  could  have  been  sufficient;  for 
it  was  to  him,  as  Jefferson  has  willingly  conceded, 
that  the  fellow-citizens  of  this  colony  were  chiefly 


68  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

indebted  for  the  unity  which  prevailed  among  them. 
Never  forgetting,  however,  his  plain  origin  and  de 
ficient  education,  this  son  of  the  soil  liked  to  put 
on  his  hunting-shirt  and  go  into  the  woods  to  talk 
familiarly  with  common  men  round  a  fire ;  he  ap 
pealed  to  the  people  in  all  his  eloquence  and  con 
versation  by  the  force  of  a  native  sympathy.  His 
torrent  of  language  and  the  glow  of  Ms  imagery 
were  wonderful,  as  the  more  cultivated  who  heard 
him  on  great  occasions  acknowledged ;  yet  Patrick 
Henry  appears  to  have  been  little  of  a  logician,  and 
it  was  hard  for  the  intelligent  of  his  audiences  to  tell 
afterwards  what  he  had  said  that  so  moved  them. 

The  second  Virginia  Convention  met  March  2, 
1775,  at  Richmond;  and  it  was  here,  during  its 
eventful  session  in  a  modest  meeting-house,  and 
shortly  before  the  fight  at  Lexington,  that  Henry 
made  that  immortal  harangue  whose  closing  sentence 
—  "  Give  me  liberty  or  give  me  death  "  — is  familiar 
still  to  American  school-boys.  When  the  orator  sat 
down,  with  pale  face  and  glaring  eyes,  "  terrible  to 
look  upon,"  his  hearers,  it  was  said,  felt  sick  with 
excitement.  That  speech  supported  a  resolution,  in 
troduced  by  himself,  for  arms  and  defence ;  the 
burden  of  both  being,  in  view  of  the  events  which 
hastened  in  Masachusetts  to  a  climax,  —  "  We  must 
fight."  To  the  old  and  moderate  leaders  of  the 
Convention  —  to  Bland,  Pendleton,  and  Harrison  of 
the  Congressional  delegates,  and  to  Nicholas  and 
even  to  Wythe,  who  was  a  rebel  at  many  points  — 


MORNING   OF  REVOLUTION.  69 

this  seemed  precipitate;  they  hesitated  to  take  the 
plunge;  but  Henry's  resolutions  were  eloquently 
supported  by  Richard  Henry  Lee,  while  Jefferson,  Ma 
son,  and  Page,  progressive  men,  pressed  to  the  same 
conclusion.  Henry's  resolutions  passed  by  a  decided 
majority ;  and  a  plan  of  efficient  defence  was  promptly 
reported,  to  which  the  Convention  agreed  on  the  25th 
of  March. 

This  Richmond  Convention  chose  to  the  second 
Continental  Congress  the  same  delegates  who  had 
represented  the  colony  in  the  first;  but  a  vacancy 
being  anticipated  in  the  list,  Jefferson  was  chosen  the 
substitute.  That  vacancy  soon  occurred ;  for  when 
Lord  North's  "  conciliatory  proposition  "  to  the  colo 
nies  reached  the  royal  governor,  he  convened  the 
House  of  Burgesses  on  the  ist  of  June  to  take  it  into 
consideration.  Peyton  Randolph  withdrew  from 
Congress  to  take  his  usual  place  as  presiding  officer  of 
the  colonial  legislature,  and  Jefferson  prepared  at 
once  to  replace  him.  But  before  setting  out  for 
Philadelphia,  the  new  delegate  succeeded,  with  Ran 
dolph's  own  aid  and  countenance,  in  carrying  through 
the  House  of  Burgesses  an  answer  which  should  har 
monize  in  spirit  with  the  sentiment  already  entertained 
in  Congress.  Virginia's  response  accordingly  was 
spirited,  as  became  her  position  as  the  oldest  of  these 
colonies :  it  rejected  the  proposals  of  the  British 
ministry  as  merely  changing  in  effect  the  form  of 
oppression;  and  such,  meantime,  was  the  drift  of 
continental  events,  —  for  Lexington  had  long  since 


70  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

been  fought,  —  that  Lord  Dunmore,  unable  to  hold 
the  Virginia  rebels  any  longer  in  check,  had  fled 
already  for  shelter  to  the  guns  of  a  British  frigate. 
Jefferson,  in  his  Memoir,  makes  mention  of  the 
skilful  and  judicious  management  by  which  all  re- 
sistants  to  royal  oppression  among  his  fellow-citizens 
were  kept  so  well  united  as  to  bring  Virginia  firm- 
faced  into  the  vanguard  of  revolution.  The  bolder 
spirits  that  now  controlled  slackened  somewhat  their 
pace,  that  these  others  who  agreed  with  them  on 
general  principle  might  catch  up.  Nothing  liberal  in 
policy,  however,  had  a  chance  for  success  until  the 
royal  government  was  ousted  from  authority;  for 
the  colonial  mind,  so  Jefferson  observes,  was  circum 
scribed  by  a  habitual  belief  at  this  time  that  it  was  a 
liege  duty  to  be  subordinate  to  the  mother  country  in 
all  matters  of  government.  The  king's  council,  which 
checked  in  Virginia  the  representative  body  or  Bur 
gesses,  like  another  House  of  Lords,  held  their  places 
at  royal  will,  and  served  in  humble  submission.  The 
governor,  who  had  a  negation  on  the  colonial  laws, 
held  by  the  same  tenure,  and  still  more  devotedly ; 
and  finally,  the  royal  veto  shut  out  all  hope  of 
amelioration. 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.        71 


CHAPTER   V. 

DECLARATION    OF    INDEPENDENCE. 
1775-1776. 

JEFFERSON  left  Williamsburg  and  the  House  of  Bur 
gesses  for  Philadelphia  on  the  eleventh  day  of  June, 
1775,  to  take  his  seat  in  the  Continental  Congress. 
Travelling  in  his  phaeton,  with  two  spare  horses,  and 
having  to  pay  guides  for  their  assistance  part  of  the 
way,  as  his  pocket-memorandum  shows,  he  spent  ten 
tedious  days  on  the  journey  before  reaching  his  dis 
tant  destination.  The  differences  of  exchange,  from 
pistareen  to  guinea,  he  jotted  down  minutely  in  his 
little  book  as  he  crossed  the  line  from  Virginia  to 
Maryland  and  from  Maryland  to  Pennsylvania.  At  the 
Quaker  City,  of  rectangular  pattern,  he  took  tempo 
rary  lodgings  with  one  Ben  Randolph,  a  carpenter, 
on  Chestnut  Street;  and  on  the  2ist  of  June,  the  day 
after  his  arrival,  he  joined  the  honourable  delegates 
of  the  thirteen  colonies,  whose  assembling  place  was 
the  plain  brick  building  known  as  Carpenters'  Hall. 

Congress  had  been  about  six  weeks  in  session  when 
this  young  Virginian  took  his  seat  among  so  many 
elders.1  His  fame  as  the  author  of  the  "  Summary 

i  Thomas  Jefferson  appears  to  have  been  the  youngest 
member  but  two  in  this  body.  He  was  thirty-two  years  old ; 


72  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

View  "  had  preceded  him  ;  and  he  brought,  as  a  further 
claim  to  public  confidence  and  distinction,  Virginia's 
answer  to  Lord  North's  "  Conciliatory  Proposition," 
which  was  likewise  of  his  own  composition.     Besides 
"the  reputation  of  a  masterly  pen,"  Jefferson's  attain 
ments  in  science  and  the  modem  languages  made  him 
at  once  a  prodigy  among  these  contemporaries,  about 
half  of  whom  had  been  college-bred,  but  very  few 
given  to  general  accomplishments.    "  Duane  says  that 
Jefferson  is  the  greatest  rubber-off  of  dust  that  he  has 
met  with,"  writes  the  astonished  John  Adams  in  his 
diary  this  same  year ;  "  that  he  has  learned  French, 
Italian,  and  Spanish,  and  wants  to  learn  German." 
Scholarship  in  these  stirring  times  could  have  been 
of  little  consequence  in  such  a  body  without  strong 
and  sound  convictions  on  the  questions  uppermost, 
and  the  sympathy  which  co-operates.     That  harmo 
nious  feeling  which  was  already  cementing  together 
the  two  leading  colonies  of  America,  Massachusetts 
and  Virginia,    soon   produced  the  most  remarkable 
personal  friendship  of  the  age.     Adams  and  Jefferson 
were  marked    for   one   another.      "  Though  a  silent 
member  in  Congress,"  wrote  the  former  when  recall 
ing  the  first  recollections  of  his  younger  associate, 
"  he  was  so  prompt,  frank,  explicit,  and  decisive  upon 

but  Edward  Rutledge  was  twenty-six,  and  John  Jay  less  than 
thirty.  Neither  John  Adams  nor  Patrick  Henry  had  reached 
the  prime  of  life.  Benjamin  Franklin,  seventy-one  years  of 
age,  was  the  oldest  among  the  delegates,  as  well  as  the  most 
distinguished  in  civil  experience. 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.        73 

committees  and  in  conversation,  —  not  even  Samuel 
Adams  was  more  so,  —  that  he  soon  seized  upon  my 
heart." 

Jefferson  had  reached  Philadelphia  in  stirring  times. 
It  was  on  the  very  day  of  his  arrival,  as  one  biographer 
reminds  us,  that  Washington  received  his  commission 
from  Congress;  and  before  taking  his  seat  on  the 
2ist,  Jefferson  saw,  most  likely,  his  revered  fellow- 
citizen  ride  away  on  his  long  journey,  under  escort, 
after  reviewing  the  Philadelphia  troops.  The  news 
of  Bunker  Hill  came  to  Philadelphia  that  same  2ist  of 
June  before  night,  —  tidings  that  stirred  one's  blood, 
and  set  the  great  heart  of  this  representative  assembly 
throbbing  with  a  new  pulsation. 

Virginians  must  have  been  welcomed  to  influence 
in  such  a  body.  Five  days  after  he  had  taken  his 
seat,  the  youth  who  had  rebuked  his  king  was  placed 
with  John  Dickinson,  of  Pennsylvania,  upon  a  com 
mittee,  already  previously  appointed,  for  drawing  up 
a  statement  of  the  causes  of  taking  arms.  Jeffer 
son  prepared  the  draft,  as  had  been  commonly  ex 
pected,  but  Dickinson  thought  it  too  strong ;  and  to 
indulge  the  scruples  of  the  latter,  who  as  a  delegate 
hesitated  constantly  from  a  vain  hope  of  reconcilia 
tion  with  the  mother  country,  his  colleagues  gave  him 
the  paper  to  work  upon.  He  drafted  the  whole 
document  anew,  preserving  of  Jefferson's  composition 
only  the  last  four  and  a  half  paragraphs.1  The  com 
mittee  approved  and  reported  ;  Congress  in  early  July 
1  See  Appendix,  p.  248. 


vSKAtf  Y 
OF  THE 


(    UNIVERSITY  J 

V.  r\c  I 


74  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

accepted  the  report ;  and  the  address,  when  promul 
gated,  was  hailed  with  thunderous  approval  through 
out  the  colonies.  Read  from  pulpits,  in  market-places, 
and  amid  artillery  salute  at  the  head  of  our  continental 
armies,  the  document  was  long  praised  and  remem 
bered  as  one  of  the  best  and  most  popular  that  ever 
emanated  from  that  body  which  forged  the  destinies 
of  America.  But  while  Dickinson  gave  to  that  paper 
the  suppressed  and  forbearing  statement  of  griev 
ances  which  might  suit  the  times  a  little  longer,  the 
glow  of  the  document  was  found  in  Jefferson's  pero 
ration,  which  fortunately  remained  as  he  wrote  it. 

Strange  is  it,  that  long  after  bloodshed  and  the 
contention  of  arms  have  been  actually  entered  upon, 
men  should  still  cherish  the  idea  that  victory  means 
only  to  wipe  out  the  temporary  wrong,  leaving  oppor 
tunities  to  inflict  injury  as  before.  Such,  however, 
was  the  prevalent  belief  when  the  American  Revolu 
tion  opened,  as  it  is  of  all  revolutions,  indeed,  whose 
real  basis  is  popular.  Our  ancestors  drew  the  sword, 
it  has  well  been  observed,  not  to  vindicate  "  natural 
rights,"  but  as  British  subjects,  in  every  sense  of  the 
word,  who  merely  attempted  to  redress  the  practical 
wrongs  inflicted  by  a  lawful  but  unjust  sovereign  to 
whom  they  owed  allegiance.  And  yet,  one  should  add, 
unless  revolution  can  reserve  some  radical  change  in 
view,  as  the  last  ideal  resort,  such  a  cause  will  not  long 
be  found  worth  fighting  for.  For  that  radical  change  in 
some  future  contingency  the  Jeffersonian  paragraphs 
of  this  address  by  Congress  prepared  well  the  public 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.        75 

mind  by  language  whose  exhortation  was  union,  un- 
serried  ranks,  and  a  firm  purpose  until  hostilities 
should  cease  on  the  part  of  the  aggressor,  and  all 
danger,  furthermore,  of  renewing  them.  A  single 
word,  when  italicized,  brings  out  the  pregnant  possi 
bility  in  the  very  breath  of  a  disclaimer.  "  Lest  this 
declaration  should  disquiet  the  minds  of  our  friends 
and  fellow- subjects  in  any  part  of  the  empire,  we 
assure  them  that  we  mean  not  to  dissolve  that  union 
which  has  so  long  and  so  happily  subsisted  between 
us,  and  which  we  sincerely  wish  to  see  restored. 
Necessity  has  not  yet  driven  us  into  that  desperate 
measure,  or  induced  us  to  excite  any  other  nation 
to  war  against  them."  Such  is  the  language  of 
revolution,  from  the  very  same  pen  which  in  a  twelve 
month  wrote  out  a  counterpart.  And  thus,  too,  are 
men  carried  on  together  by  the  strong  undercurrent 
while  they  are  most  loudly  protesting.  Yet  so  little 
of  the  vanity  of  authorship  attached  to  Jefferson,  and 
of  so  much  greater  consequence  did  he  habitually  ; 
deem  it  that  associates  should  work  harmoniously 
together,  that  he  never,  save  by  a  statement  made  for  : 
posthumous  effect,  challenged  Dickinson's  long  fame 
as  composer  of  the  entire  address. 

Once  again,  in  course  of  the  earliest  session  he 
attended,  was  Jefferson's  talent  for  composition  called 
into  exercise  :  this  time  in  drafting  a  reply  to  Lord 
North's  "  Conciliatory  Proposition,"  on  behalf  of 
Congress,  such  as  he  had  already  framed  for  the 
Virginia  House  of  Burgesses.  This  latter  document 


76  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

resembled  much  the  former,  though  amplified  and 
statelier  in  tone;  his  colleagues  of  the  committee 
were  satisfied  with  it ;  and  their  report  being  adopted 
by  Congress  on  the  last  day  of  July,  the  British  ulti 
matum  was  solemnly  rejected,  and  war  went  on. 

Six  weeks  at  Philadelphia  as  a  chance  substitute  — 
for  Congress  adjourned  on  the  ist  of  August  —  had 
made  for  young  Jefferson  a  continental  renown,  and 
when  he  returned  to  his  constituency,  the  Convention 
of  Virginia  chose  him  third  on  its  list  of  seven  dele 
gates  for  the  next  momentous  year;  Patrick  Henry 
and  Washington,  who  were  reserved  for  other  honours, 
declining  a  re-election. 

Congress  met  once  more  at  Philadelphia  in  Septem 
ber,  1775.  Men's  minds,  the  ensuing  winter,  tended 
inevitably  to  independence,  for  bloodshed  blotted 
gradually  from  the  horizon  all  other  alternatives  but 
abject  submission.  Jefferson's  nature  was  in  full  sym 
pathy  with  the  irresistible  movement.  To  a  Tory 
kinsman  of  Virginia,  one  of  the  Randolphs,  who  had 
lately  sailed  for  England,  he  wrote,  November  29, 
in  language  not  unlike  what  he  had  penned  to  him 
about  three  months  before  :  "  Believe  me,  dear  sir, 
there  is  not  in  the  British  Empire  a  man  who  more 
cordially  loves  a  union  with  Great  Britain  than  I  do. 
But,  by  the  God  that  made  me,  I  will  cease  to  exist 
before  I  yield  to  a  connection  on  such  terms  as  the 
British  Parliament  propose ;  and  in  this  I  think  I 
speak  the  sentiments  of  America.  We  want  neither 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.         77 

inducement  nor  power  to  declare  and  assert  a  separa 
tion.  It  is  will,  alone,  which  is  wanting ;  and  that  is 
growing  apace  under  the  fostering  hand  of  our  king." 

Biography  views  history  only  in  its  immediate 
connection  with  the  individual  whose  life  is  under  de 
velopment.  Crowding  events  signalized  1776, — one 
of  those  rare  years  that  rise  in  bold  and  permanent 
relief  from  the  table-land  of  a  century.  The  prospect 
of  conciliation  with  the  mother  country  was  fast  fading 
out.  In  March  Washington  with  his  continental  volun 
teers  had  expelled  the  British  troops  from  Boston. 
Paine's  masterly  pamphlet,  "  Common  Sense,"  nerved 
the  American  people  to  their  necessary  task.  The 
issue  of  declaring  final  separation  was  felt  by  Whigs, 
whether  ultra  or  conservative,  to  be  near  a  solution ; 
and  as  popular  conviction  ripened  toward  such  a 
result,  Congress  encouraged  the  old  thirteen  colonies, 
and  the  colonies  in  turn  encouraged  Congress,  to 
prepare  accordingly. 

Jefferson  had  been  absent  from  Congress  all  the 
winter;  not  idle,  however,  but  busying  himself  in 
raising  local  money  and  supplies,  and  in  giving  to  the 
politics  of  his  province  proper  impulse  and  direction. 
His  fond  mother  died  in  March  after  her  long  widow 
hood,  and  domestic  affairs  at  Monticello  needed  re 
adjustment.  In  those  days,  while  each  colony  voted 
only  as  a  unit  in  Congress,  colleagues  often  relieved 
one  another.  But  at  length,  after  an  absence  of  four 
months  and  a  half,  Jefferson  resumed  his  seat  at  Phil 
adelphia  on  the  1 3th  of  May,  in  ample  time  to  figure, 


78  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

with  the  full  confidence  of  his  fellow-members,  in  the 
crowning  work  of  the  session.  Upon  Peyton  Ran 
dolph's  sudden  death,  several  months  earlier,  John 
Hancock  of  Massachusetts  had  been  fully  installed 
as  Speaker.  It  was  on  Friday,  the  yth  of  June,  that 
Richard  Henry  Lee,  who  headed  the  list  of  the  Vir 
ginia  delegates,  moved  those  momentous  resolutions 
for  independence  which  the  convention  of  his  colony 
had  transmitted  for  general  action.  Congress,  after 
a  brief  debate,  deferred  the  discussion  to  July,  but 
meanwhile,  that  no  time  should  be  lost,  resolved  to 
appoint  a  committee  to  draft  the  Declaration.  Five 
persons  were  chosen  by  ballot  for  that  purpose : 
Thomas  Jefferson,  John  Adams,  Benjamin  Franklin, 
Roger  Sherman,  and  Robert  R.  Livingston.  Jefferson, 
having  received  the  highest  number  of  votes,  stood 
at  the  head  of  this  committee.  He  was  a  Virginian, 
preferable  for  such  a  task  to  his  colleague  Lee,  who 
now  left  temporarily  for  home,  for,  unlike  the  latter, 
he  had  no  personal  enemy ;  he  was  skilful  with  the 
pen,  familiar  with  all  the  points  in  controversy,  emi 
nently  able  to  make  the  better  reason  appear  so,  and 
withal  the  youngest  member  of  the  committee,  whom 
others  might  permit  without  serious  rivalry  to  take 
the  labouring  oar.  For  reasons  such  as  these,  his 
colleagues  —  and  Adams  and  Franklin  most  graciously 
on  their  own  part  —  left  him  free  to  his  own  thought 
ful  expression. 

The  little  writing-desk  on    which   was    drawn   up 
America's  great  charter  is  still  preserved  ;  and  Jeffer- 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.        79 

son  sat  composing  it,  with  pen  in  hand,  in  the  parlor 
of  a  furnished  suite  occupying  the  middle  story  of  a 
new  brick  house  which  stood  alone  on  the  south  side 
of  Market  Street,  close  to  Seventh.  Here  he  lodged 
at  the  time,  a  quarter  of  a  mile  from  Independence 
Square,  taking  his  meals  at  the  City  Tavern.  His 
original  draft,  as  well  as  the  engrossed  paper  which 
bears  the  final  signatures  of  Congress,  may  still  be 
seen  among  the  archives  of  the  Union.  Two  or  three 
alterations,  verbal  and  unimportant,  were  suggested  in 
this  draft  by  Adams  and  Franklin,  colleagues  upon 
his  sub-committee  to  whom  Jefferson  first  showed  it 
separately ;  after  which  a  fair  copy  was  written  out  by 
its  original  author,  reported  to  the  full  committee, 
and  from  thence  unaltered  to  Congress.  Time 
pressed ;  for  the  Lee  Resolution  of  June  7,  for  de 
claring  these  colonies  independent,  passed  Congress 
in  committee  of  the  whole  on  the  ist  of  July,  the  day 
when  discussion  was  resumed,  and  twelve  colonies 
voted  favourably  the  following  day  on  its  final  pas 
sage.  Next  in  order  was  taken  up,  without  adjourn 
ment,  the  drafted  document  which  Jefferson  had 
reported;  and  for  three  consecutive  days,  including 
the  2d  and  4th,  the  debate  took  so  critical  a  tone 
that  the  author  writhed  silently  in  his  seat,  next  to 
Benjamin  Franklin ;  and  to  console  him,  the  latter 
related  the  amusing  story  of  John  Thompson,  the 
hatter,  whose  signboard  had  to  be  shorn  down  to  his 
own  name  and  the  figure  of  a  hat  to  please  his  cen 
sorious  friends. 


80  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

Congress  really  improved  the  text  by  its  severe 
supervision ;  for  what  was  lost  in  fervour  of  style  was 
gained  in  dignity.  Suppression  of  feeling,  or  toning 
down  the  first  indignant  utterances  of  the  heart,  adds 
strength  to  historical  statement,  foV  it  manifests  the 
superadded  wish  to  be  fair  and  truthful ;  but  strong 
emotion,  where  wrongs  are  suffered,  should  be  the 
basis  of  composition.  It  was  emotion  that  Jefferson's 
pen  contributed  to  the  Declaration  as  no  other  could 
have  done ;  and  to  his  general  structure  of  the  docu 
ment,  its  argument,  its  recital  of  common  injuries,  no 
objection  certainly  sustained  itself.  But  the  rhetoric 
seemed  in  some  places  overloaded,  and  Congress 
showed  good  taste  in  trimming  down.  Eighteen  sup 
pressions,  six  additions,  and  ten  alterations  appear 
from  Mr.  Randall's  printed  comparison,  —  changes, 
however,  as  a  later  biographer  has  properly  observed, 
nearly  every  one  of  them  for  the  better.  It  is  re 
markable  that  Parliament  was  treated  in  this  instru 
ment  with  studied  contempt;  its  whole  indictment 
was  framed  against  the  king,  —  not,  however,  on 
second  thought,  as  a  tyrant  whose  usurpation  was 
without  one  redeeming  trait,  but  as  a  tyrant  unfit  to 
be  the  ruler  of  a  free  people,  which  is  tyranny 
enough.  Counts  were  stricken  out  of  doubtful  im 
port,  —  such  as  charged  George  III.  with  inciting  trea 
sonable  insurrections  among  us,  and  with  forcing  the 
slave-trade  into  our  markets.  That  Congress  should 
have  expunged  the  latter  passage  has  been  regretted 
by  many ;  but  condemnation  of  slavery,  to  be  wholly 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.         81 

just,  should  have  been  made  in  some  other  form  of  ex 
pression  ;  for,  by  Jefferson's  own  admissions  of  colonial 
sentiment,  our  American  people  were  not  so  free  from 
guilt  that  they  could  lay  the  whole  blame  upon  others. 
Another  important  change  which  Congress  made  in 
the  draft  consisted  in  softening  down  all  passages 
which  seemed  to  convey  a  censure  on  our  British 
brethren;  for  the  idea  still  haunted  the  minds  of 
many  that  we  had  friends  at  home  worth  keeping 
terms  with. 

But  the  splendid  preamble  of  this  Declaration  and 
its  opening  formulary  of  truths  self-evident  were  re 
tained  in  almost  the  very  words  as  originally  written. 
And  while  the  closing  passage  was  remoulded  so  as 
to  correspond  with  the  highly  appropriate  language 
of  the  Lee  Resolution  in  which  Jefferson's  committee 
had  been  first  instructed,  here,  as  in  most  other 
changes  made  in  the  proposed  instrument,  Jefferson's 
eloquent  and  captivating  phraseology  rounded  off 
every  period,  and  gave  solid  symmetry  to  the  whole. 
In  fine,  though  verbal  luxuriances  might  have  been 
finally  pruned  away,  little  was  interpolated;  and 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  as  the  world  now 
knows  it,  remains  almost  entirely  the  composition  of 
its  gifted  draftsman.  Not  a  ringing  phrase  or  word 
in  it,  except  possibly  in  the  two  closing  sentences, 
clinks  of  other  metal.  And  so,  passing  the  ordeal  of 
discussion,  the  instrument  which  shapes  the  destinies 
of  this  Western  hemisphere  was  signed. late  in  the  af 
ternoon  of  July  4,  and  soon  promulgated  to  the  world. 
6 


82  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

The  regenerating  influence  of  our  Declaration  of 
Independence  has  proved  far  greater  than  they  could 
have  foreseen  who  first  subscribed  it.  Thirteen  colo 
nies  of  America,  three  millions  of  people,  in  shaking 
off  the  yoke  of  British  allegiance,  only  began  the 
work  of  which  a  single  century  opens  the  vista  of 
realization.  Independence  of  Europe  and  of  European 
patterns  of  government  draws  its  lengthening  train  of 
consequences,  and  already  have  the  ideas  of  the  new 
world  begun  to  react  upon  the  old.  To  Spanish- 
Americans,  to  patriots  everywhere  whose  effort  has 
been  to  establish  popular  institutions,  the  instru 
ment  drawn  by  Jefferson  serves  as  the  favourite 
model.  State  constitutions  began  to  express  the  same 
ideas ;  in  one  tongue  or  another  its  diction  has  been 
copied,  and  its  sublime  generalization  :  so  that  "when 
in  the  course  of  human  events  "  has  passed  into  the 
familiar  caption  of  monarchy's  death-warrant. 

Some  have  derived  the  best  inspiration  of  this 
composition  from  one  passage,  some  from  another. 
To  many,  its  noblest  utterance  is  in  the  stately 
preamble,  which  passed  to  a  final  adoption,  after  leav 
ing  its  author's  writing-table,  without  the  alteration 
of  a  single  word,  —  with  that  recognition,  so  different 
from  the  supercilious  disdain  of  the  ancients,  of  "  a 
decent  respect  to  the  opinions  of  mankind."  Others 
admire  most  the  close  of  the  paper,  remodelled  from 
the  original  draft,  yet  ending  in  that  terse  Jeffersonian 
pledge  for  mutual  support  of  "  our  lives,  our  fortunes, 
and  our  sacred  honour."  But  general  sentiment 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.        83 

favours   most    strenuously,    as    it    ought    to   do,    the 
epitome  of  self-evident  truths  with  which  the  main 
declaration  opens.     "  Glittering  generalities,"  as  they 
were  once  called  in  days  when  Americans  themselves 
faltered  in  high  principle,    they  have    educated  the 
human    race    to    freedom    and    brotherhood.      That 
"all   men  are  created   equal"   was   not   literally  in 
tended.      Indeed,  the    very   mention  of  "merciless 
Indian  savages  "   in  another  passage  of  this  instru 
ment  seems  inconsistent  with  such  an  idea ;  and  Jef 
ferson   himself,    in  his  "Notes  on  Virginia"  a  few 
years  after,  frankly  admitted   that   he   believed   the 
negro  race  inferior  to  our  own  in   point  of  natural 
capacity.     Genius,  in  any  race  of  men,  is  the  endow 
ment  of  favoured  individuals.     The  context,  however, 
relieves  the  vexed  phrase  of  all  brutal  circumscrip 
tion.     The  statement  of  fundamental  truths  was,  with 
no  important  change,  the  draftsman's  own ;    and  his 
argument,  compressed  into  maxims,  led    up  to  the 
conclusion,  expressed  with  flowing  pen  as  the  most 
self-evident  of  all,  —  that  for  securing  the  inalienable 
rights  of  all  men  to  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of 
happiness  governments  are  instituted,  "  deriving  their 
just  powers  from  the   consent  of  the  governed,"   so 
that  whenever  one  government  becomes  destructive 
of  these  ends,  the  people  have  a  right  to  alter,  abol 
ish,  and  substitute  another  with  the  same  purpose  in 
view.     Jefferson's  own  changes  in  his  manuscript,  as 
he  sat  composing  it,  may  aid  in  illuminating  its  inten 
tion,  when  one  seeks  to  discover  it.     It  was  he  who 


84  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

crystallized  these  "  self-evident  truths,"  and  John 
Adams  who  contended  earnestly  for  them  in  discus 
sion.  Life,  liberty,  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  —  rights 
inherent  and  inalienable,  and  derived  from  an  equal 
and  independent  creation,  —  such  an  epitome  as  this 
dignified  as  never  before  the  freedom  of  the  indi 
vidual  in  contrast  with  blind  allegiance  to  a  sover 
eign.  From  that  little  germ  of  fundamentals  —  first 
expressed  so  well,  though  not  necessarily  first  con 
ceived,  in  our  Declaration  —  expands  by  innate  force 
a  new  conception  of  government  and  its  popular  rela 
tions,  bursting  the  shell  of  old  conditions,  constantly 
growing,  constantly  grander.  By  this  full  symbol  of 
political  faith  British  colonial  dependence  was  shiv 
ered  in  the  last  century ;  race  emancipation  followed 
in  the  present ;  and,  unless  experience  belies  the  text, 
the  next  cycle  of  a  hundred  years  will  begin  the 
reign  of  universal  brotherhood.  And  thus  does  the 
compression  of  a  creed  give  motive  impulse  when 
graven  upon  tablets  which  haunt  the  imagination 
and  are  not  forgotten. 

The  originality  of  these  abstract  truths,  aside  from 
their  present  concrete  form,  has  been  better  ques 
tioned  than  the  power  and  genuineness  inherent  in 
them.  Even  John  Adams  in  1822  encouraged  the 
malignant  enemies  of  Jefferson,  with  whom  he  had 
been  politically  associated,  by  asserting  that  there 
was  not  an  idea  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
that  had  not  been  hackneyed  in  Congress  for  two 
years  previous ;  that  its  substance  was  contained  in 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.        85 

the  journals  of  Congress  in  1774;  and  that  its  es 
sence  might  be  found  in  a  pamphlet  by  James  Otis 
of  still  earlier  date,  which  was  printed  before  the 
Continental  Congress  met  at  all.  Comparison  will 
not  bear  out  that  statement ;  though  doubtless  the 
genera]  argument  for  government  as  originating  in 
compact  and  the  consent  of  the  governed  is  one 
with  which  American  minds  had  long  been  familiar, 
and  Locke,  the  darling  of  our  colonial  pioneers,  had 
ably  elaborated  it.  But  whether  Locke  in  turn  owed 
nothing  to  earlier  philosophers  is  another  matter; 
and  the  real  philanthropy  of  the  document  is  de- 
ducible  rather  from  that  earlier  of  Christian  sources, 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 

Jefferson  himself  has  answered  such  cavillers  with 
sense  and  forbearance.  "  Otis's  pamphlet  I  never 
saw,  and  whether  I  had  gathered  my  ideas  from 
reading  or  reflection,  I  do  not  know.  I  know  only 
that  I  turned  to  neither  book  nor  pamphlet  while 
writing  it.  I  did  not  consider  it  as  any  part  of  my 
charge  to  invent  new  ideas,  and  to  offer  no  senti 
ment  which  had  ever  been  expressed  before.  Had 
Mr.  Adams  been  so  restrained,  Congress  would  have 
lost  the  benefit  of  his  bold  and  expressive  advocations 
of  the  rights  of  Revolution."  And  anterior,  it  might 
be  added,  to  the  resolutions  of  Congress  in  1774, 
to  which  John  Adams  had  referred,  was  Jefferson's 
own  "  Summary  View "  of  1774,  already  circulating 
in  England,  which  contained  all  the  ideas  of  those 
resolutions  worth  restating,  and  assertions  of  natural 


86  TffOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

rights  on  our  colonial  behalf,  far  bolder.  The  origi 
nality  of  the  document  of  1776  in  phraseology  and 
tone  of  expression  rests  on  grounds  even  stronger.1 

There  never  was  a  break  in  the  bond  once  begun 
that  held  these  thirteen  clustering  jurisdictions  in  a  com 
mon  league.  Simultaneously  with  the  mutual  resolve 
which  dissolved  "all  political  connection"  with  Great 
Britain,  Congress  adopted  another  for  devising  a  plan 
of  confederation,  —  Virginia  herself  having  led  in  the 
early  resolution  of  May,  for  making  those  two  aims 
co-ordinate  ;  and  until  that  confederation,  "  perpetual" 
by  its  own  terms,  became  complete,  Congress  carried 
on  revolution  as  the  common  cause  of  the  united 
colonies  under  the  credentials  of  an  overruling 
necessity.  The  Declaration  itself  had  not  declared 
simply  the  colonies,  but  "  these  united  colonies,"  free 
and  independent  States  ;  and  its  solemn  appeal  was  as 
"  the  Representatives  of  the  United  States  of  America 
in  General  Congress  assembled,"  and  "  in  the  name 

1  For  a  full  summary  of  the  once  exciting  "  Mecklenburg 
controversy,"  in  1819,  see  3  Randall's  Jefferson,  Appendix 
No.  2.  Curiously  enough,  it  seems  to  have  escaped  the  atten 
tion  of  both  Jefferson's  friends  and  his  critics,  over  a  spurious 
document  claiming  to  have  been  issued  in  North  Carolina  in 
r775,  that  the  points  of  coincidence  in  the  alleged  Mecklenburg 
declaration  relate  essentially  to  the  closing  language  used  in 
the  Declaration  of  1776,  and  to  the  amendments  more  espe 
cially,  which  Congress  made  to  Jefferson's  draft  by  embodying 
the  phraseology  of  the  Lee  Resolution.  See  I  Randall,  142,  172, 
for  comparison. 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.        87 

and  by  the  authority  of  the  good  people  of  these 
colonies."  Such  an  establishment,  in  the  strict  sense 
of  the  term,  as  a  sovereign  State  never  for  a  moment 
existed  in  this  whole  broad  belt  of  Anglo-America,  — 
save,  possibly,  when  Rhode  Island  and  North  Carolina 
during  the  brief  space  of  1789  isolated  themselves 
by  their  own  stubborn  dissent  from  the  more  perfect 
union  of  our  later  constitution. 

In  the  eternal  secrecy  which  shrouds  this  Congress 
of  the  Revolution,  —  a  deliberative  and  representative 
body,  yet  an  anomalous  one,  —  little  of  its  clashing 
influences  can  ever  be  revealed  to  the  world.  But  of 
the  fierce  though  brief  debates  of  1776,  most  mem 
orable  of  them  all,  we  gain  some  momentary  glimpses. 
Jefferson,  no  doubt,  sat  a  silent  spectator,  for  the 
most  part  if  not  altogether,  while  the  battle  went  on 
in  the  closed  chamber;  yet  his  pulse  beat  calmly 
enough  for  the  usual  precise  details  of  weather  and 
temperature  to  go  into  his  private  record-book.  John 
Adams  was  the  great  champion  of  the  Declaration  on 
the  floor,  fighting  fearlessly  for  every  word  of  it ;  and 
no  other  pen,  it  has  well  been  observed,  has  done 
half  so  much  as  Jefferson's  to  impress  posterity  with 
the  magnitude  of  his  colleague's  splendid  services  on 
that  eventful  occasion.  "  He  was  the  Colossus  of  that 
debate,"  was  the  fixed  tribute  of  this  gifted  pen 
through  all  the  bitter  rivalries  and  alienation  that  fol 
lowed  in  later  years. 

Of  some  other  historical  colleagues  in  this  Con 
gress  Jefferson  has  left  characteristic  impressions. 


88  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

Hancock  he  hardly  knew;  but  Samuel  Adams,  the 
stern  Boston  Puritan,  he  has  well  styled  in  his  own 
figurative  speech,  the  "  Palinurus  of  the  Revolution." 
"  He  was  truly,"  says  Jefferson,  "  a  great  man,  wise  in 
counsel,  fertile  in  resources,  immovable  in  his  pur 
poses,  and  had,  I  think,  a  greater  share  than  any 
other  member  in  advising  and  directing  our  measures 
in  the  Northern  war."  "  As  a  speaker,"  he  adds,  "  he 
could  not  be  compared  with  his  living  colleague  and 
namesake ;  "  but,  although  not  of  fluent  elocution,  he 
was  "  so  rigorously  logical,  so  clear  in  his  views,  abun 
dant  in  good  sense,  and  master  always  of  his  subject, 
that  he  commanded  the  most  profound  attention 
whenever  he  arose  in  an  assembly  by  which  the  froth 
of  declamation  was  heard  with  sovereign  contempt." 

Dickinson,  it  is  known,  led  debate  on  the  loyal  and 
timorous  side;  and  though  honestly  devoted  to  the 
popular  cause,  as  war  went  on,  he  alone  of  all  the  del 
egates  in  the  present  Congress  refused  his  name  to 
the  charter.  Of  Franklin  we  know  that  his  influence 
was  great  and  even  transcendent  in  this  body;  but 
when  he  spoke  it  was  in  brief  and  pithy  utterances, 
and  he  gave  momentum  to  great  measures  chiefly  by 
the  weight  of  great  years  and  experience  and  hon 
ourable  character,  and  that  consummate  tact  and 
appreciation  for  others,  rooted  in  true  benevolence, 
which  distinguished  him  above  all  Americans  of  his 
times.  No  man  in  all  the  colonies  had  served  so  long 
in  posts  of  influence,  nor  given  the  Crown  such  offence 
by  his  final  defection.  But  Franklin  was  one  of  those 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.        89 

who  addressed  himself  to  carrying  his  measure,  not 
to  winning  fame  by  rhetorical  display.  With  such 
conduct  in  a  deliberative  assembly  Jefferson  could 
heartily  sympathize.  "  I  served,"  said  he  in  later  life, 
"  with  General  Washington  in  the  legislature  of  Vir 
ginia  before  the  Revolution,  and  during  it  with  Dr. 
Franklin  in  Congress.  I  never  heard  either  of  them 
speak  ten  minutes  at  a  time,  nor  to  any  but  the  main 
point  which  was  to  decide  the  question.  They  laid 
their  shoulders  to  the  great  points,  knowing  that  the 
little  ones  would  follow  of  themselves." 


90  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

CHAPTER   VI. 

VIRGINIA'S  REFORMER  AND  LEGISLATOR. 
1776-1779. 

JEFFERSON  touched  the  orb  of  continental  delibera 
tions  as  lightly  as  a  winged  Mercury ;  but  wherever  he 
touched  he  left  his  footprint.  We  shall  see  him  again 
in  this  confederate  Congress  for  a  brief  episode,  leav 
ing  a  new  landmark  behind  on  his  departure ;  but  for 
the  next  few  years  his  private  concerns  confined  him  to 
Virginia,  and  to  the  especially  congenial  task  of  adapt 
ing  his  own  proud  Commonwealth  to  the  exigencies 
of  revolution. 

He  had  been  rechosen  to  Philadelphia,  notwithstand 
ing  his  expressed  wish  to  surrender  his  seat ;  and  this, 
too,  with  the  Virginia  delegation  reduced  in  number 
to  five.  But  domestic  reasons  made  it  imperative  for 
him  to  be  nearer  home ;  he  left  Philadelphia  on  the 
2d  of  September,  1776,  resigning  his  seat,  and  jour 
neyed  homeward  to  Monticello.  Congress  this  same 
month  made  him  the  offer  of  a  mission  to  France,  to 
co-operate  with  Franklin  and  Silas  Deane  in  soliciting 
arms  and  alliance  ;  but  this  also  he  declined.  On  the 
seventh  day  of  October,  in  the  same  year,  and  on  the 
first  day  of  its  session,  he  took  his  seat  in  the  Vir 
ginia  House  of  Delegates,  and  with  great  zeal  entered 
promptly  upon  the  work  of  State  reform. 


VIRGINIA'S  REFORMER  AND  LEGISLATOR.    91 

Posterity  need  not  feel  surprised  that  Jefferson's 
fame  in  federal  politics  should  have  cast  into  the  shade 
his  more  contracted  work  in  his  native  State.  Nor  is 
it  strange  that  one  who  made  so  little  personal  renown 
as  a  debater  among  a  people  of  all  others  given  over 
to  discussion  should  have  failed  of  proper  apprecia 
tion  as  a  legislator.  With  Jefferson,  legislation  was  a 
business  for  achieving  results ;  and  that  same  plastic 
touch  which  during  his  two  presidential  terms  is 
known  to  have  kept  the  two  houses  of  Congress  in 
genial  accord  with  the  Executive,  derived  its  delicacy 
from  a  local  experience  which  oblivion  has  long  since 
curtained.  How  to  lead  deliberative  bodies  to  effi 
cient  action,  and  how  to  shorten  what  he  used  to 
call  "  the  morbid  rage  of  debate,"  was  his  constant 
solicitude.  "Why,"  he  was  once  asked,  "can  you 
sit  in  silence,  hearing  so  much  false  reasoning  which 
a  word  should  refute?  "  "To  refute,  indeed,  is  easy," 
was  his  answer;  "but  to  silence  is  impossible."  In 
measures  brought  forward  by  himself  he  took,  as  he 
said,  the  labouring  oar ;  but  in  general  he  was  willing 
to  listen. 

With  ideas  as  a  legislative  leader  so  self-denying, 
and  with  rare  and  excessive  modesty  in  claiming  his 
personal  part  in  any  work  where  others  were  called 
upon  to  co-operate  with  him,  Jefferson  chose  for  the 
next  few  years  a  field  comparatively  restricted  for  re 
sults,  while  the  great  strife  for  transatlantic  liberty 
surged  on  at  a  distance.  Reform  was  his  aim,  and 
its  leading  operations  twofold :  First,  the  municipal 


92  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

law  of  the  State  needed  adaptation  to  the  new  and 
expanded  conditions  of  republican  life  and  liberty; 
next,  the  whole  civil  and  criminal  code  required 
revision. 

Jefferson  was  thirty-three  years  of  age  when  he 
entered  with  high  aspirations  the  lower  branch  of 
Virginia's  General  Assembly,  by  this  time  an  inde 
pendent  legislature.  Here  was  found  a  set  of  able 
coadjutors,  some  of  them  more  youthful  still,  who 
aided  strenuously  the  passage  of  those  liberal  measures 
of  which  he  himself  was  chief  mover  and  draftsman. 
George  Mason  was  of  such  collaborators  the  foremost : 
a  gallant  and  philanthropic  gentleman,  whose  forceful 
oratory  was  spiced  with  cynicism.  Wythe  followed  in 
the  footsteps  of  his  former  disciple,  abandoning  con 
gressional  life,  until  presently  he  ascended  the  bench, 
and  as  judicial  administrator  in  a  State  he  made  the 
name  of  chancellor  venerable,  like  Kent  of  a  later 
generation.  Patrick  Henry,  who  was  governor,  leaned 
always  to  liberal  measures.  All  these  were  fixed  in 
State  service ;  but  of  all  Jefferson's  helpers  in  the 
present  task  none  followed  him  so  faithfully  and  with 
so  growing  a  grasp  of  continental  needs  as  did  Madi 
son,  the  sober-minded,  whose  companionship  here 
begun  in  the  legislature  was  the  companionship  of  a 
lifetime.  But  Madison  was  still  very  young,  inexperi 
enced  in  public  service,  and  excessively  modest ;  not 
yet  conspicuous  in  debate,  his  usefulness  came  after 
ward,  while  his  elder  friend  was  abroad,  in  marshal 
ling  the  tardier  measures. 


VIRGINIA  'S  REFORMER  AND  LEGISLATOR.    93 

The  first  blow  Jefferson  struck  was  at  the  British 
excrescence  of  entails.  He  reported  his  bill,  a  sweep 
ing  one,  on  the  i4th  of  October,  to  abolish  that  prop 
of  an  artificial  aristocracy  which  kept  lands  tied  up 
from  alienation.  In  doing  so,  he  raised  against 
himself  for  the  first  time  a  large  and  influential  host 
of  local  enemies,  some  of  them  blood  relatives  on  his 
mother's  side ;  but  his  onset  was  successful.  The 
bill  passed  after  a  three  weeks'  struggle ;  and  with  its 
twin  measure,  the  statute  of  descents,  whose  record 
came  later,  laid  fungus  feudalism  on  its  back.  The 
wail  of  the  first-born  was  heard  long  after,  attributing 
to  such  levelling  principles  of  Jefferson  the  gradual 
decay  of  Virginia's  first  settlements.  But  the  real 
evil  was  that  Jefferson's  levelling  could  not  go  far 
enough.  He  and  his  reforming  set  would  have  rooted 
out  slavery  from  the  State  by  a  gradual  plan,  such  as 
various  Northern  States  successfully  pursued  ;  but  here 
their  efforts  were  balked,  and  reformation  taught  but 
half  its  lesson. 

The  first  easy  victory  in  the  General  Assembly  was 
not  the  only  one.  At  this  same  session  Jefferson,  who 
served  on  various  committees,  brought  in  a  bill  defining 
citizenship,  which  conferred  upon  foreigners  the  right 
to  be  naturalized  after  a  two  years'  residence,  and  ex 
pressly  recognized  the  natural  right  of  expatriation  as 
claimed  in  his  pamphlet  of  1774.  This  act  he  pushed 
through  later ;  and  other  bills  which  were  reported,  for 
removing  the  seat  of  government,  for  reorganizing 
the  judiciary,  and  for  punishing  treason  without  the 


94  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

old  incident  of  corruption  of  blood,  received  more  or 
less  of  his  creative  assistance.  And  finally  a  bill  for 
the  complete  revision  of  the  laws  which  he  had  intro 
duced  early  in  the  session,  was  passed  on  the  24th  of 
October;  and  on  November  5,  by  a  joint  vote  of  the 
two  Houses,  the  committee  appointed  to  execute 
the  work  consisted  of  himself,  Edmund  Pendleton, 
Wythe,  Mason,  and  Thomas  L.  Lee. 

This  last  occupation  kept  Jefferson  fully  employed 
after  the  legislature  had  adjourned.  Naturally,  as 
patron  and  author  of  the  important  measure,  he  be 
came  chairman  of  the  committee.  He  was  named 
first  in  the  resolution  appointing  them,  and  his  name 
appeared  first  signed  to  the  report  which  they  subse 
quently  made  when  the  work  was  done ;  but  in  his 
own  writings  he  has  never  once  mentioned  that  his 
place  was  at  the  head. 

The  members  of  this  committee  met  in  January, 
1777,  at  Fredericksburg  (a  central  and  convenient 
point  for  most  of  them),  to  map  out  their  work  and 
allot  the  several  portions.  Mason  and  Lee,  who  were 
not  lawyers,  excused  themselves.  Lee  died  soon 
afterward,  and  Mason  resigned.  Their  vacancies 
remained  unfilled,  and  the  three  remaining  commis 
sioners  proceeded  with  the  task,  allotting  to  each  a 
certain  portion.  To  Jefferson  was  apportioned  the 
common  law  and  British  statutes  down  to  the  fourth 
year  of  James  I.  (1607),  when  the  colony  was 
founded ;  to  Wythe  the  British  statutes  from  that  date 


VIRGINIA'S  REFORMER  AND  LEGISLATOR,    95 

to  1776  ;  to  Pendleton  the  colonial  statutes.  Jefferson 
had  evidently  the  heaviest  burden,  and  his  share  in 
cluded  descents  and  the  criminal  law.  Having  finished 
as  leisure  might  permit  their  several  tasks,  the  three 
met  again  at  Williamsburg,  in  February,  1779,  to 
compare  their  work.  Together  they  went  critically 
over  the  whole,  sentence  by  sentence,  weighing  every 
word,  until  every  part  was  conjointly  agreed  upon, 
and  then  returned  to  their  homes,  that  each  might 
have  fair  corrected  copies  of  his  portion.  Pendleton's 
part  had  been  insufficiently  done,  by  copying  the  re 
tained  text  as  it  stood  before ;  and  to  assimilate  its 
plan  and  execution  to  the  other  portions,  Jefferson 
and  Wythe  divided  the  work  between  themselves  with 
Pendleton's  permission,  and  went  all  over  it  again, 
hewing  out  redundant  words  and  simplifying  the 
general  expression.  The  whole  body  of  British  and 
colonial  statutes  and  laws  of  Virginia,  as  thus  com 
pressed,  was  reported  by  the  two  chief  compilers,  Pen 
dleton's  concurrence  being  signified  by  proxy.  One 
hundred  and  twenty- six  bills,  which,  as  printed  by  the 
House,  covered  but  ninety  folio  pages  closely  print 
ed,  made  this  Virginia  revision  a  model  of  admirable 
brevity  and  clearness,  not  less  than  of  accuracy. 

Jefferson's  Memoir  indicates  his  discriminating 
taste,  as  a  codifier,  in  balancing  the  merit  of  adjudi 
cated  comment  against  new  textual  phraseology.  "  I 
thought  it  material,"  he  observes,  "not  to  vary  the 
diction  of  the  ancient  statutes  by  modernizing  it,  nor 
to  give  rise  to  new  questions  by  new  expressions.  The 


96  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

text  of  these  statutes  had  been  so  fully  explained  and 
defined,  by  numerous  adjudications,  as  scarcely  even 
now  to  produce  a  question  in  our  courts."  But  at 
the  same  time  he  thought  it  would  be  also  useful  in 
all  new  drafts  to  discourage  the  style  of  the  later 
British  statutes  and  of  the  Virginia  Assembly  ;  "  which 
from  their  verbosity,  their  endless  tautologies,  their 
involutions  of  case  within  case,  and  parenthesis  within 
parenthesis,  and  their  multiplied  efforts  at  certainty, 
by  saids  and  of  ores  aids,  by  ors  and  by  ands,  to  make 
them  more  plain,  are  really  rendered  more  perplexed 
and  incomprehensible,  not  only  to  common  readers, 
but  to  the  lawyers  themselves."  This  remark  touches, 
a  professional  foible  which  unhappily  did  not  disap 
pear  with  the  colonial  age  ;  for  many  lawyers  to  this 
day  would  keep  justice  coiled  up  in  hieroglyphical 
expressions  which  impose  upon  the  vulgar.  One 
cannot  toss  off  a  statute  like  an  epigram ;  and  rarely 
enough  are  the  canons  of  literary  taste  invoked  in 
the  language  of  legislation.  But  —  to  cite  a  single 
instance  —  Jefferson,  in  drawing  the  Virginia  statute  of 
descents,  showed  the  master  hand  in  one  of  the  dryest 
and  most  technical  of  legal  subjects,  and  without  a 
pattern  to  guide  him.  It  was  a  simple  composition, 
comprehensive,  concise,  perspicuous  ;  the  only  impor 
tant  one,  perhaps,  among  novel  American  enactments 
of  the  age,  which  in  the  course  of  a  century  of  continu 
ous  experience  gave  rise  over  its  meaning  to  but  a 
single  controversy,  and  that  by  no  means  for  its  dis 
paragement.  By  that  act  the  canons  of  descent 


VIRGINIA'S  REFORMER  AND  LEGISLATOR.     97 

pre-existing,  which  Virginia  derived  from  the  English 
law,  were  utterly  demolished,  and  a  scheme  based 
upon  new  principles  took  their  place.  Adopted  pre 
cisely  as  Jefferson  drew  it  up,  it  embraces  eighteen 
clauses,  and  occupies  on  the  statute-book  little  more 
than  a  page. 

About  the  time  the  report  of  the  revision  was 
presented,  Jefferson  and  Wythe  left  the  legislature 
for  other  scenes.  Of  the  one  hundred  and  twenty-six 
separate  bills  which  comprised  their  work,  some  had 
been  introduced  and  passed  already ;  as  for  instance 
the  act  which  prohibited  the  slave-trade.  The  Vir 
ginia  code  was  never  acted  upon  as  one  harmonious 
whole  ;  but  bills  were  taken  from  the  mass  and  passed 
from  time  to  time  as  public  exigencies  permitted.  It 
was  not  until  after  the  general  peace  of  1783  that  the 
main  body  of  the  work  was  taken  up  systematically 
for  legislative  discussion.  None  of  the  revisers  were 
then  present  to  advocate  or  to  explain  their  work. 
Jefferson  was  abroad,  and  both  of  his  colleagues  were 
on  the  bench;  but  by  Madison's  unwearied  efforts 
most  of  the  bills  were  put  upon  their  final  passage 
with  little  alteration. 

The  reformation  of  the  criminal  code  embodied  in 
this  revision  was  hindered  somewhat  longer.  In  that 
reformation  Jefferson  bore  the  leading  part.  All  five 
members  of  the  committee  had  agreed,  at  their  first 
conference,  to  confine  the  death-penalty  to  the  two 
chief  offences  of  treason  and  murder,  abolishing,  be 
sides,  the  revolting  practice  of  drawing  and  quartering. 

7 


98  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

All  other  felonies  were  made  punishable  by  confine 
ment  and  hard  labour,  except  a  few,  to  which,  against 
Jefferson's  personal  wishes,  the  old  Hebrew  principle 
of  retaliation  was  applied.  Though  imperfect  in  this 
latter  respect,  the  reform  was  quite  too  humane  for 
British-born  citizens  to  adopt  at  once.  When  brought 
forward  in  1 785,  it  was  lost  by  a  single  vote  ;  nor  did  the 
public  mind  of  Virginia  ripen  fully  enough  to  bear  the 
change  until  eleven  years  later,  when  a  new  bill  passed 
the  legislature  imbued  with  the  choicest  spirit  of  the 
original  one.  It  is  worthy  of  remembrance  that  gen 
erations  before  Romilly,  Mackintosh,  and  Brougham 
could  carry  in  the  mother  country  a  similar  reform, 
—  when,  within  a  single  year,  nearly  ninety  human 
beings  were  sentenced  at  the  Old  Bailey  to  the  gallows 
for  stealing,  counterfeiting,  robbery,  or  riot,  —  our 
youthful  codifier  sought  to  persuade  his  imitating 
Commonwealth  to  reduce  the  death-penalty  to  its  most 
appropriate  limits.  "  Cruel  and  sanguinary  laws,"  so 
ran  his  preamble,  "  defeat  their  own  purpose  by  en 
gaging  the  benevolence  of  mankind  to  withhold  prose 
cutions,  to  smother  testimony,  or  to  listen  to  it  with 
bias,  when,  if  the  punishment  were  only  proportional 
to  the  injury,  men  would  feel  it  their  inclination,  as 
well  as  their  duty,  to  see  the  laws  observed."  * 

It  is  a  rare  art  which  can  warm  up  a  preamble  into 
sententious  argument,  and  make  a  dull  fiat  of  legis- 

1  Jefferson's  private  summary  of  criminal  legislation,  with 
copious  notes  and  references  and  a  literal  translation  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  laws,  has  been  preserved. 


VIRGINIA  'S  REFORMER  AND  LEGISLA  TOR.     99 

lation   its    own   impressive   advocate;    but   Jefferson 
turned  all  such  "whereas  "  phrases  into  opportunities, 
and  made  the  dumb  statute  plead  for  liberal  ideas. 
One  recalls   Plato's    observation,  that   every   decree 
should  have  its  lofty  prelude.      No  preamble  more 
splendid  do  the    annals  of  legislation   furnish   than      7)  „• 
that  which  he  prefixed  to  his  bill  for  establishing  re 
ligious  freedom ;  albeit  such  phrases  were  judiciously    ' 
suppressed    as    intimated    that    religious   belief  lies 
wholly  independent  of  the  will.     Toleration  needs  no 
better  plea  than  in  the  closing  words  of  this  preamble  : 
"  that  truth  is  great,  and  will  prevail  if  left  to  her 
self ;  that  she  is  the  proper  and  sufficient  antagonist 
to  error,  and  has  nothing  to  fear  from  the  conflict 
unless  by  human  interposition  disarmed  of  her  natural 
weapons,  free  argument  and  debate;  errors  ceasing 
to  be  dangerous  when  it  is  permitted  freely  to  con 
tradict  them."     We  need  not  regard  the  draft  of  this 
preamble    as    unexceptionable;    and   still    less   that 
passage  in  the  "Notes  on  Virginia  "  which  Jefferson 
injected  for  final  effect,  whose  force  is  marred  by  one 
or  two  phrases  irreverently  written.     The  shaft  flies 
too  far  when  toleration  merges  into  careless  scepti 
cism  :  religious  freedom  is  good,  but  not  equally  so 
is  freedom  from  religion. 

Jefferson  at  this  time  of  life,  we  are  forced  to  sur 
mise,  overestimated,  as  freethinkers  are  apt  to  do, 
the  evil  of  religious  bias.  Children  (as  he  presently 
expressed  himself  in  his  "  Notes  on  Virginia  ")  should 
not  have  the  Bible  put  into  their  hands  at  an  age 


100  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

when  their  minds  are  not  matured  for  religious  inquiry, 
but  should  be  taught  the  facts  of  history  instead.  But 
what  history,  so  far  as  the  distant  past  is  concerned, 
rests  on  a  surer  basis  ?  The  mind  which  is  not  roused 
when  young  to  religious  inquiry  is  never  likely  to  in 
quire  with  earnestness  at  all.  Religion  or  irreligion, 
meanwhile,  operates  the  springs  of  human  conduct; 
nor  is  it  mental  assent,  but  humble  faith  that  we  have 
to  deal  with.  God's  law  compels  the  will,  like  the  law 
of  human  authority ;  we  may  acknowledge  it  or  not, 
but  its  obligations  remain  imposed,  though  the  range 
of  their  enforcement  be  veiled  from  us.  And  of 
Christianity,  at  least,  the  essence  of  all  faith  is  loyalty 
to  a  divine  exemplar.  How  tame  a  part,  then,  must 
mental  equipoise  play  in  an  equation  so  momentous. 

Toleration,  disestablishment,  the  voluntary  remis 
sion  of  public  worship  to  voluntary  support,  charge 
and  surcharge  the  atmosphere  of  our  modern  Ameri 
can  life.  Jefferson's  bill  for  religious  freedom  J:hus 
proved  the  harbinger*  of  brighter  days,  when  govern 
ment  on  these  Western  shores  should  leave  conscience 
to  its  legitimate  spiritual  empire.  The  change  thus 
invoked  startled  Europe,  as  well  it  might ;  for  this 
was  the  first  legislative  mandate  of  the  kind  in  Chris 
tendom.  Vane,  Sidney,  and  others,  to  be  sure,  had 
plead  in  earlier  times  the  cause  of  religious  toleration  ; 
Penn,  Calvert,  and  Roger  Williams  had  practised  on 
such  a  principle  in  founding  three  of  our  thirteen 
colonies :  but  Virginia,  in  the  early  plenitude  of  her 
independent  power,  not  only  tolerated  by  this  statute 


VIRGINIA'S  REFORMER  AND  LEGISLATOR.    IOI 

but  declared  her  protection  of  the  rights  of  conscience 
against  all  further  persecution,  annoyance,  or  attempt 
to  impose  a  civil  disability.  And  in  the  concluding 
clause  of  this  celebrated  enactment  we  see  expressed 
in  the  framer's  words  the  just  confidence  that  its 
policy  would  prove  durable.  For  knowing  well  that 
"  to  declare  this  act  irrevocable  would  be  of  no  effect 
in  law,  yet  we  are  free  to  declare,  and  do  declare, 
that  the  rights  hereby  asserted  are  of  the  natural 
rights  of  mankind,  and  that  if  any  act  shall  be  here 
after  passed  to  repeal  the  present,  or  to  narrow  its 
operation,  such  act  will  be  an  infringement  of  natural 
right." 

Jefferson  as  a  reformer  meant  to  eradicate  every 
fibre  of  ancient  or  future  aristocracy  after  the  British 
model,  and  found  in  this  oldest  of  American  States 
a  government  truly  republican  and  adapted  to  over 
spread  the  Western  continent.  Four  of  the  bills  passed 
or  reported  while  hie  was  in  the  legislature  kept  this 
idea  most  prominently  in  view :  ( i )  The  repeal  of 
the  laws  of  entail,  which  "  would  prevent  the  accumu 
lation  and  perpetuation  of  wealth  in  select  families, 
and  preserve  the  soil  of  the  country  from  being  daily 
more  and  more  absorbed  in  mortmain."  (2)  The 
abolition  of  primogeniture  and  the  unequal  partition 
of  inheritances,  "  removing  those  feudal  and  unnatural 
distinctions  which  made  one  member  in  every  family 
rich  and  all  the  rest  poor."  (3)  The  restoration  of 
the  rights  of  conscience,  relieving  the  dissenters  who 
were  comparatively  poor  from  taxation  for  the  support 


102  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

of  an  Anglican  establishment,  which  at  this  time  was 
the  church  of  the  rich,  and  did  little  missionary  work 
except  condescendingly.  (4)  A  bill  for  general  edu 
cation,  which  would  qualify  the  people  to  take  their 
part  intelligently  as  individuals  in  the  new  drama  of 
self-government.  "  And  all  this,"  adds  the  reformer, 
"  would  be  affected  without  the  violation  of  a  single 
natural  right  of  any  one  individual  citizen." 

We,  who  find  liberal  machinery  broadly  exhibited 
and  running  without  friction,  are  apt  to  consider  too 
lightly  the  formidable  difficulties  under  which  it 
was  established.  Think  of  the  solid  barricade  of 
prejudice  and  inveterate  habit,  not  less  than  the 
phalanx  of  active  bigotry  through  which  reform  must 
force  its  way ;  of  the  opprobrium  and  social  ostracism, 
of  the  incubus  of  wealth  and  influence,  which  choke, 
if  they  can,  all  fame  which  does  not  filter  through  the 
regular  channels.  Popularity  itself  is  no  sufficient 
recompense  for  the  loss  of  friends  in  one's  own 
private  circle,  unless  the  cause  itself  be  inspiring. 
Against  the  bill  for  religious  freedom  even  Washing 
ton's  towering  name  helped  the  inertia.  And  the 
fourth  of  Jefferson's  schemes  for  placing  Virginia  on 
the  pinnacle  of  independent  greatness  miscarried 
altogether.  His  educational  bill  proposed  a  syste 
matic  plan,  with  elementary  schools  for  all  children 
rich  and  poor ;  colleges  or  high  schools  for  superior 
youth ;  and  ultimately  a  university  grade  for  teaching 
the  sciences  in  their  highest  scope.  This  scheme, 
worked  out  with  his  usual  full  detail,  the  legislature 


VIRGINIA'S  REFORMER  AND  LEGISLATOR.    103 

never  acted  upon.  And  well  might  its  author  have 
apprehended  such  a  result,  for  there  was  no  strong 
middle  class  in  the  Commonwealth  to  support  so 
splendid  an  endowment.  Planters  and  the  landed 
gentry  of  Virginia  who  placed  their  own  children 
under  private  tutors  felt  no  concern  in  taxing  them 
selves  to  maintain  county  common-schools  for  the 
meaner  inhabitants.  Common  education  is  an  out 
growth  of  self-government  and  the  democratic  spirit ; 
while  kings  and  the  wealthy  aristocracy  have  set  the 
first  example  of  munificence  in  respect  of  higher 
seminaries.  Disappointed  in  his  earlier  and  broader 
expectations,  we  shall  see  Jefferson  finishing  his  long 
experience  at  its  latest  epoch  as  the  founder  for  his 
State  of  a  university. 

In  other  respects  than  education,  Virginia  proved 
herself  more  than  half  a  century  behind  her  innovating 
son.  Her  heart  was  set  too  much  on  the  fabric  of 
perishing  grandeur.  Co-leader  with  Massachusetts 
through  the  Revolution,  she  wasted  already  the  patri 
mony  of  her  glorious  renown.  Some  of  the  noblest 
sons  of  the  State,  like  Jefferson,  Wythe,  and  Mason, 
wished  at  this  time  for  emancipation ;  and  in  a  bill 
drawn  and  offered  by  Jefferson,  which  passed  in  1778 
without  opposition,  the  importation  of  slaves  by  sea 
or  land  was  forbidden,  and  all  slaves  so  imported 
were  proclaimed  free.  This  act  did  Virginia  honour; 
and  it  was  one  of  the  very  first  which  followed  the 
assumption  of  her  independent  Statehood.  Enthu- 


104  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

siasm  exhausted  itself,  however,  in  preliminaries,  as  it 
often  will.  In  his  "  Notes  on  Virginia,"  prepared 
but  two  years  after  the  report  of  the  revisers,  Jefferson 
coupled  with  religious  freedom  and  the  other  altera 
tions  of  the  code,  emancipation  of  all  after-born  slaves, 
as  one  of  the  changes  he  had  contemplated  but  could 
not  realize.  "The  bill,"  says  he,  "reported  by  the 
revisers  did  not  itself  contain  that  proposition ;  but  an 
amendment  containing  it  was  prepared,  to  be  offered 
to  the  legislature  whenever  the  bill  should  be  taken 
up."  And  he  proceeds  to  give  the  elaborate  details 
intended,  which  would  have  placed  the  young  negro 
offspring  with  their  parents  for  nurture,  and  then, 
after  educating  them  carefully  at  the  public  expense 
according  to  the  capacity  of  each,  transplanted  them 
to  form  some  independent  colony  of  their  own  under 
gentle  supervision.  And  while  unreservedly  express 
ing  his  disbelief  that  the  two  races  could  mingle  in 
harmony  under  co-equal  conditions  of  freedom,  he 
pictured  in  glowing  colours  the  ruin  to  morals  and  in 
dustry  with  which  slavery  cursed  already  the  master 
race.  "And  can  the  liberties  of  a  nation,"  he  adds, 
"  be  thought  secure  when  we  have  removed  their  only 
firm  basis,  a  conviction  in  the  minds  of  the  people 
that  these  liberties  are  of  the  gift  of  God?  That  they 
are  not  to  be  violated  but  with  his  wrath  ?  Indeed  I 
tremble  for  my  country  when  I  reflect  that  God  is 
just;  that  his  justice  cannot  sleep  forever." 

Once  more  in  his  Memoir,  written  in  1821,  when 
Virginia  had  returned  wholly  to  her  idols,  he  com- 


VIRGINIA'S  REFORMER  AND  LEGISLATOR.    105 

mented  in  the  same  prophetic  strain  on  the  final 
failure  of  his  scheme  :  « It  was  found  that  the  public 
mind  would  not  yet  bear  the  proposition,  nor  will  it 
bear  it  even  at  this  day.  Yet  the  day  is  not  distant 
>vhen  it  must  bear  and  adopt  it,  or  worse  will  follow. 
VNothing  is  more  certainly  written  in  the  book  of  fate 
than  that  these  people  are  to  be  free.  Nor  is  it  less 
certain  that  the  two  races  cannot  live  in  the  same 
government.  Nature,  habit,  opinion,  have  drawn  in 
delible  lines  of  distinction  between  them." 

In  an  interval  of  forty  years  these  Cassandra-like 
prophecies   had    been   repeated,  and   another   forty 
years'  interval  saw  the  pillars  of  State  shaken  over  the 
prophet's  grave.     Who  will  say  that  Jefferson  was  not 
a  far-sighted  reformer?     «  The  first  half,"  remarks  an 
intelligent  son  of  Virginia,  «  has  now  been  fulfilled ; 
whether  the  rest  was  forecasted  with  an  equal  pre 
science  only  the  inscrutable  future  can  decide."    And 
against  the  estimated  cost  of  deportation,  which  ap 
palled  his  fellow-citizens  while  Jefferson  was  alive,  he 
sets  the  far  more  appalling  losses  inflicted  upon  Vir 
ginia  by  the  Civil  War.     Nor  as  yet,  one  may  add, 
have  the  books  of  the  negro  problem  in  America  been 
finally  balanced.1 

Jefferson's  labouring  oar  in  the  Virginia  legislature 
was  by  no  means  confined  to  these  broader  channels. 
He  was  engaged  on  various  special  committees  and 

1  See  the  valuable  pamphlet,  "  Thomas  Jefferson  as  a  Legis- 
ator  "  by  R.  G.  H.  Kean,  Esq.,  of  Lynchburg,  which  the  author 
has  found  quite  serviceable  in  the  present  chapter. 


106  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

various  subjects  of  immediate  importance.  There 
were  journeyings  often,  during  these  industrious 
years,  between  Williamsburg  and  Monticello,  for  his 
sick  wife  needed  his  attendance.  A  son,  his  only 
one,  was  born  in  May,  1777,  and  lived  but  seventeen 
days.  Jefferson's  domestic  ties  were  tender ;  yet  the 
hope  of  male  offspring  had  not  constrained  him  from 
striking  the  first  blow  at  the  root  of  unequal  inheri 
tances  ;  and,  comforting  the  afflicted  mother,  he  went 
on  with  his  share  of  the  revision,  resolved  that  in 
time  no  aristocracy  should  flourish  among  his  fellow- 
citizens  but  that  of  talents  and  virtue.  But  of  all  the 
reforms  of  this  period  for  which  he  laboured  so  inde- 
fatigably,  he  gloried  in  none  so  greatly  as  the  act  for 
religious  freedom.  That  triumph,  though  arriving 
late,  cheered  his  heart  while  sojourning  far  away  in 
Europe ;  and  his  authorship  of  that  act  was  one  of 
the  three  achievements  which  he  asked  to  have  in 
scribed  after  death  upon  his  monument. 


GOVERNOR  IN  WAR    TIMES.  107 


CHAPTER    VII. 

GOVERNOR   IN   WAR   TIMES. 
1779-1781. 

IN  1779,  before  he  had  presented  the  report  of  the 
Virginia  codifiers  as  their  chairman,  Jefferson  was 
chosen  governor  of  the  State.  He  was  the  second 
incumbent  of  the  office,  following  Patrick  Henry,  who 
had  served  for  three  continuous  terms,  which  was  all 
that  the  new  Constitution  permitted.  At  this  period, 
following  the  expulsion  of  the  Crown  officials,  and 
for  many  years  to  come,  the  chief  magistrate  was 
chosen  annually  by  the  legislature;  and  Jefferson 
found  a  competitor  on  this  occasion  in  his  college 
friend  John  Page,  who  was  well-born  and  owned  a 
plantation  with  the  largest  house  upon  it  in  all  Vir 
ginia.  Fame  and  conspicuous  service  carried  the  day 
in  spite  of  all  personal  prejudice;  but  Jefferson's 
majority  was  a  very  slight  one,  and  he  had  perilous 
difficulties  before  him. 

Jefferson  begafc  his  executive  incumbency  on  the 
ist  of  June,  at  the  age  of  thirty-six.  To  be  governor 
of  Virginia  in  the  gloomiest  stage  of  the  Revolutionary 
War  was  no  post  for  politicians  to  envy.  He  was  not 
deficient  in  vigour  nor  personal  courage  ;  but  his  mis 
sion  was  rather  to  impart  ideas,  to  stir  the  impulses 


108  THOMAS  JEFFERSON'. 

to  such  a  struggle,  than  to  guide  onward  its  bloody 
campaigns.  A  mind  susceptible  to  impressions,  sym 
pathetic,  and  fond  of  profound  experimentation,  cir 
cumstances,  and  mighty  ones,  wrought  speedily  into 
a  statesman,  a  diplomatist,  and  a  political  organizer,  a 
man  of  gentle  mould  who  in  ordinary  peace  times 
would  have  figured  quite  as  likely  as  a  philosopher,  a 
philanthropist,  or  one  of  our  higher  educators  in  the 
applied  sciences.  To  the  profession  of  arms  Jeffer 
son  was  never  bred,  and  he  had  little  relish  for  it. 
War  was  felt  to  be  a  present  necessity ;  but  all  wars 
were  hateful  to  him  in  theory,  and  the  absorption  of 
war  powers  by  civil  magistrates  a  dangerous  tempta 
tion  to  tyranny.  When  the  idea  was  broached  but 
just  before  in  the  legislature  to  concentrate  in  Patrick 
Henry,  his  predecessor,  the  classical  functions  of 
dictator,  no  citizen  of  the  State  more  decidedly  op 
posed  it. 

We,  who  have  lived  through  civil  war,  may  recall 
men  trained  to  law  and  philanthropy  who  raised  regi 
ments,  hurried  troops  to  the  front,  and  provided  with 
rare  energy  and  foresight  for  all  the  emergencies  of 
a  military  strife  averse  to  the  whole  tenour  of  their 
past  experience.  But  it  is  one  thing  for  a  State 
Executive  to  supply  men  and  resources  for  the  battles 
which  our  trained  generals  are  fighting  afar  off,  and 
another  to  conduct  affairs  through  the  wild  chaos  of 
panic  and  disorder  while  the  invader  is  present  and 
an  impoverished  soil  is  overrun  by  hostile  armies. 
At  such  a  crisis  a  governor  of  mere  civilian  tastes 


GOVERNOR  IN  WAR   TIMES.  109 

and  experience  will  not  easily  give  confidence ;  and 
if  ill  success  attends  the  operations  which  are  carried 
on  within  the  jurisdiction  by  military  commanders 
independently  of  him,  he  is  sure  to  be  blamed  for  it. 
Jefferson  took  the  helm  at  this  unfortunate  juncture 
of  affairs.  Had  the  seat  of  revolutionary  conflict 
remained  at  the  North  as  under  Patrick  Henry's  rule, 
he  might  have  retired  with  equal  applause.  But  the 
scene  shifted,  and  Jefferson's  popularity  for  the  first 
and  chief  time  suffered  that  partial  eclipse  to  which  all 
public  leadership  is  liable. 

The  early  glow  of  the  Revolution  had  now  faded 
out,  and  through  all  the  trying  and  tedious  years 
which  followed  the  challenge  of  independence,  it 
taxed  the  whole  resources  of  these  colonies  to  make 
that  challenge  good.  On  the  second  day  of  Jeffer 
son's  service  as  governor,  Virginia  ratified  in  full  form 
the  French  alliance  treaties,  declaring  them  binding 
on  that  Commonwealth,  —  a  sovereign  sanction  of 
what  Congress  had  actually  negotiated,  but  a  token 
none  the  less  that  the  union  of  these  States  was  still 
of  imperfect  force.  That  French  alliance,  while  failing 
as  yet  to  offset  the  British  strength,  infused  into  the 
public  mind  a  false  sense  of  security,  making  patriotic 
sacrifice  proportionally  the  harder ;  and  George  III., 
meanwhile,  was  more  stubbornly  resolved  than  ever 
to  use  all  the  means  in  his  power  to  crush  his  rebel 
lious  subjects.  If  accession  to  France  was  inevitable, 
then,  at  least,  that  accession  would  be  made  of  as 
little  avail  to  her  as  possible.  A  soil  that  could  not 


no  THOMAS  JEFFERSON: 

be  subdued  might  at  all  events  be  ravaged.  Possi 
bly,  too,  if  some  colonies  were  torn  forever  from  the 
mother  country,  others  might  be  reconquered. 

With  these  desperate  designs  in  view,  the  foe 
shifted  the  seat  of  war  from  New  England  to  the 
Southern  provinces,  whose  vast  area  was  thinly  popu 
lated  and  ill  defended  in  comparison.  Georgia  and 
the  two  Carolinas  once  subjugated,  the  next  move 
was  toward  the  important  region  of  the  Chesapeake. 
It  was  a  distracted  vigilance  that  the  young  civilian 
governor  had  to  exercise  as  the  war  drew  nigh  to  the 
borders  of  his  native  State.  Cornwallis  must  be  fought 
in  North  Carolina,  and  kept  from  advancing  victori 
ously  ;  Gates  and  then  Greene  had  to  be  strengthened 
in  opposing  him.  This  was  simply  in  self-defence ; 
besides  which  Washington's  army  had  to  be  recruited, 
where  the  Virginia  veterans  were  already  serving.  The 
Indians  gave  solicitude  on  the  Western  border ;  and 
here  once  more  in  Albemarle  County  were  thousands 
of  British  and  German  prisoners.  On  the  side  of  the 
ocean  the  Chesapeake  was  a  wide  and  open  door  to 
molestation ;  and  even  before  Jefferson  was  inaugu 
rated  the  predatory  warfare  had  begun.  A  British 
fleet  would  land  troops  on  the  shore  to  ravage,  plun 
der,  and  burn  to  their  hearts'  content,  with  nothing 
but  the  feeblest  resistance  of  the  local  militia  to 
keep  them  from  advancing  inland. 

Virginia  was  quite  unprepared  at  this  time  to 
maintain  a  close  contest  with  the  British  forces  single- 
handed.  She  had  no  money,  and  had  pressed  her 


GOVERNOR  IN   WAR    TIMES.  in 

credit  to  the  utmost  to  raise  funds  abroad.  The 
Chesapeake  presented  a  long  line  of  seaboard,  with 
numerous  navigable  rivers  as  the  grand  arteries  of  trade 
and  agricultural  products,  of  which  the  James  was  chief. 
A  forty-gun  ship  might  ascend  this  latter  river  as  fai 
as  Jamestown,  while  a  small  naval  fleet  of  the  enemy 
stationed  off  the  capes  could  blockade  the  entire 
entrance.  With  such  a  rendezvous,  it  was  easy  to 
detach  a  frigate  or  two  with  marauding  troops  on 
board  to  make  havoc,  before  a  military  force  could  be 
concentrated  at  the  point  attacked.  Virginia  had  but 
four  armed  vessels,  mounting  sixty- two  guns  in  all; 
and  as  for  efficient  fortifications,  none  whatever.  Her 
militia  were  raw  and  undisciplined ;  and  her  fighting 
strength  had  been  drained  off  to  swell  the  continental 
armies  elsewhere.  East  of  the  Blue  Ridge,  so  great 
was  the  present  scarcity  of  arms  in  the  State,  that  if 
all  the  able-bodied  freemen  now  left  behind  had  been 
summoned  together,  scarcely  one  in  five  of  them 
would  have  found  a  musket.  Slaves,  by  Jefferson's 
later  computation,  stood  as  twenty- seven  to  thirty  in 
the  Commonwealth,  when  compared  with  the  free 
inhabitants ;  and  this  afforded  another  disadvantage 
in  time  of  war ;  for  though  these  simple  children  of 
Nature  were  never  used  by  the  British  invaders  to 
fight  for  their  own  freedom,  such  crafty  inducements 
were  held  out  to  desert  for  what  proved  only  to  be  a 
change  of  masters,  that  a  constant  watch  had  to  be 
kept  up  on  the  plantations  to  prevent  their  running 
away. 


H2  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

The  Old  Dominion  did  not  lack  war  resources  of  a 
certain  description.  She  had  raw  soldiers,  horses,  and 
provisions ;  and  these  she  gave  so  generously  to  the 
continental  cause  as  to  have  generated  the  false  im 
pression  that  her  supply  was  still  abundant.  The 
truth  dawned  slowly  on  the  British  mind  that  her 
remaining  defensive  strength  was  very  little.  When 
this  had  been  discovered,  however,  by  one  predatory 
raid  after  another,  the  invader  flung  himself  upon  her 
boldly.  This  proved  ultimately,  after  all,  the  hap 
piest  circumstance  for  America ;  for  Virginia  trapped 
the  bitter  adversary,  when  a  superior  naval  force 
in  the  fleet  of  allied  France  sealed  up  the  British 
frigates  at  the  entrance  of  Chesapeake  Bay,  and 
Washington  bore  down  upon  the  army  of  Cornwallis 
with  his  continental  veterans,  leaving  no  avenue  of 
escape  by  land. 

Jefferson's  executive  incumbency  saw  no  such  happy 
culmination  of  the  long  Revolutionary  strife  ;  but  what 
he  had  to  endure  was  the  period  of  humiliating  and 
almost  resistless  invasion.  The  year  17 79,  and  indeed 
his  first  term  of  office,  passed  with  general  satisfaction, 
and  he  was  chosen  a  second  time.  In  April,  1 780, 
the  capital  of  the  State  was  transferred  from  Williams- 
burg  to  Richmond,  agreeably  to  an  act  of  the  legis 
lature  which  Jefferson  had  promoted  earlier ;  and  now 
the  stern  trial  of  Virginia  and  her  present  governor 
began.  Savannah  and  Georgia  had  been  subdued  by 
an  overwhelming  force.  Operations  in  South  Carolina, 


GOVERNOR  IN  WAR   TIMES.  113 

after  a  temporary  suspension  for  a  season,  now  re 
commenced.  A  British  fleet  and  army  invested 
Charleston  in  the  spring  of  1780,  and  on  the  i2th 
of  May  that  city  capitulated.  This  alarming  event 
aroused  Virginia  to  agonized  endeavour ;  for  unless  the 
British  armies  could  be  checked  as  they  moved  north 
ward  through  North  Carolina,  the  Old  Dominion 
must  soon  bear  the  full  shock  of  war.  The  legisla 
ture  energetically  provided  supplies  on  parchment, 
authorizing  drafts  and  the  impressment  of  needful 
stores,  and  placing  twenty  thousand  militia  at  the  dis 
posal  of  the  Executive.  But  money  and  arms  were 
wanting.  The  leading  women  of  the  State  gave  rings 
and  jewels  to  aid  the  cause ;  Jefferson's  fair  wife  set 
ting  a  noble  example  of  self-sacrifice.  Among  the 
first  impressments  of  horses  and  wagons  were  those 
of  the  governor  himself.  Gates  passed  through  Rich 
mond  in  early  July  on  his  way  to  take  command  at 
the  South ;  and  for  the  next  six  weeks  every  man, 
musket,  horse,  and  wagon  that  the  executive  could 
hire,  buy,  borrow,  or  impress  was  bestowed  upon  him. 
That  general's  disastrous  defeat  at  Camden  occurred 
in  the  very  midst  of  these  intense  endeavours,  shatter 
ing,  as  we  so  well  know,  a  reputation  which  had  begun 
to  measure  its  stature  jealously  against  the  fair  pre 
eminence  of  Washington. 

Jefferson's  judgment  has  been  blamed  for  stripping 
thus  his  own  State  to  help  on  a  campaign  waged  else 
where.     Virginia  (it  has  truly  been  observed),  while 
forward  in  the  rescue  of  her  sisters,  exposed  her  own 
8 


114  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

bosom  to  the  adversary.  But  whatever  his  course  in 
this  respect,  Jefferson  maintained  full  accord  with 
that  other  son  of  Virginia,  the  commander-in-chief, 
whose  advice  he  constantly  sought,  and  always  with 
deference.  Both  believed  at  the  time  that  Virginia's 
only  chance  of  escaping  devastation  lay  in  strength 
ening  Gates  and  checking  the  advance  of  Cornwallis's 
army  in  North  Carolina.  Jefferson  still  sent  forward 
his  supplies  and  reinforcements.  As  events  coursed, 
however,  the  next  blow  was  struck  from  another 
quarter;  for  Sir  Henry  Clinton,  who  directed  the 
British  operations  from  New  York,  now  despatched 
reinforcements  directly  to  the  mouth  of  the  James. 
The  fleet  entered  Hampton  Roads  on  the  23d  of 
October,  and  disembarked  opposite  Norfolk  ;  but  after 
a  few  weeks  of  inactivity  the  expedition  returned. 
The  month  of  December  gave  Virginians  a  breath 
ing-space  ;  but  if  by  this  time  their  stripped  and 
defenceless  condition  was  the  subject  of  anxious  cor 
respondence  with  Washington,  the  enemy  more  than 
half  suspected  it. 

On  the  last  day  of  the  old  year,  at  eight  in  the 
morning,  Richmond  received  the  startling  intelligence 
that  a  fleet  of  twenty-seven  sail  had  entered  the  capes 
of  Virginia.  This  fleet  bore  Arnold  the  betrayer  and 
a  force  under  him  numbering  from  sixteen  hundred 
to  two  thousand  men.  But  whether  friend  or  foe,  and 
whither  bound,  the  messenger  could  not  tell.  The 
governor  at  once  sent  General  Nelson  of  the  State 
militia  with  full  power  to  summon  aid  in  the  neigh- 


GOVERNOR  IN  WAR   TIMES.  115 

bouring  country.     The  legislature  was  now  in  session, 
within  two  days  of  its  adjournment;    but   not  until 
January  2,  1 781,  did  the  further  intelligence  arrive  that 
the  fleet  was  British  and  had  already  entered  the  James. 
Acting  on  this  general  advice,  the  governor  instantly 
ordered  out  the  militia,  intrusting  orders  to  the  coun 
try  members  who  were  just  departing  for  their  homes  ; 
for  on  this  same  day  the  legislature  very  hastily  ad 
journed  and  scattered.     By  the  afternoon  of  the  4th 
it  was  learned  that  the  enemy  had  landed  at  a  point 
twenty-five  miles  distant.     The  removal  of  the  public 
stores  to  a  place  of  safety  on  the  opposite  bank  of 
the  river  had  already  begun.     Jefferson  now  mounted 
his  horse  to  urge  on  the  work,  having  sent  his  wife  and 
young  children  to  the  Tuckahoe  estate  in  that  vicinity 
for  safety.     Not  a  member  of  the  council  or  assembly 
remained  at  the  capital  to  aid  the  executive ;  for  each 
had  hurried  away  on  public  duty  or  to  look  after  his 
own  household.   After  a  broken  night  Jefferson  assisted 
his  family  to  a  safer  place  of  refuge,  and  then  gal 
loped  along  the  river-bank  to  resume  once  more  the 
transfer  of  the  State  property.     Pushing  on  to  a  point 
opposite  Richmond,  his  wearied  horse  sank  dying  on 
the  road,  and  he  had  to  carry  the  saddle  and  bridle 
on  his  own  back  until  he  reached  a  farmhouse,  where 
he  borrowed  an  unbroken  colt  to  continue  the  journey. 
He  reached  a  little  town,  and  saw  the  enemy  already 
in  possession  of  Richmond  and  in  full  view  on  the 
opposite  bank.    After  remaining  there  long  enough  to 
do  what  little  he  might  for  the  safety  of  the  public 


HO  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

stores,  Jefferson  rode  on  to  the  headquarters  of  Baron 
Steuben,  the  ranking  continental  officer,  who  had 
command  in  Virginia  under  Washington's  orders. 

Arnold's  stay  in  Richmond  was,  fortunately,  a  short 
one.  Remaining  only  twenty-three  hours,  he  com 
menced  his  retreat  on  the  6th,  with  pillage  and  the 
plunder  of  private  property.  Very  little  of  public 
value  had  been  left  within  his  reach  to  destroy.  After 
three  days'  absence  from  the  capital,  Jefferson  pres 
ently  returned,  and  affairs  began  to  settle  into  some 
thing  of  their  former  routine. 

But  this  eventful  year  of  1781,  up  to  the  month  of 
October  when  Cornwallis  and  his  forces  finally  sur 
rendered,  kept  Virginia  incessantly  annoyed,  while 
contending  armies  and  their  several  commanders 
ranged  up  and  down  the  States.  The  last  and  losing 
struggle  for  British  supremacy  was  fought  out  within 
the  jurisdiction  of  this  first  colonial  settlement ;  Wash 
ington  leading  finally  in  person  the  French  and 
American  combination  on  the  soil  of  his  native  State. 
Meanwhile  a  Virginia  governor  could  do  little  more 
than  rally  the  militia  and  lend  a  soul  to  operations 
which  others  had  the  responsibility  of  conducting. 

Jefferson  pursued  active  and  spirited  measures,  but 
it  was  no  longer  possible  to  keep  the  weight  of  the 
war  at  a  distance.  Cornwallis  and  Tarleton,  long  held 
at  bay  in  North  Carolina,  at  length  swept  over  the 
border ;  and  the  enemy's  plan  was  to  subdue  Virginia 
and  make  a  Southern  conquest  complete.  Virginia's 


GOVERNOR  IN  WAR    TIMES.  117 

legislature  soon  went  scurrying  from  place  to  place,  to 
keep  clear  of  the  enemy.  In  the  course  of  a  brief 
session  in  March  it  conferred  anew  upon  the  Executive 
ample  parchment  powers  for  procuring  what  it  was 
practically  impossible  to  raise.  The  depreciation  of 
State  paper-money  was  already  about  ninety  to  one ; 
and  even  impressment  was  scarcely  more  than  a  nom 
inal  resource.  Hastening  each  adjournment  this  year 
as  an  enemy  was  thought  to  approach,  the  legislature 
met  again  on  the  yth  of  May ;  and  threatened  for  the 
third  time,  they  adjourned  until  the  24th  of  the  month 
to  meet  at  Charlottesville. 

Even  to  these  mountain  fastnesses  did  the  tide 
of  war  and  ravage  penetrate.  Tarleton's  mounted 
dragoons  galloped  westward  in  early  June,  to  capture 
or  disperse  the  dignitaries  of  the  State  government. 
The  alarm  reached  the  home  of  Jefferson  about  day 
break  on  the  4th  of  June.  The  legislature  at  Char 
lottesville  adjourned  hastily,  to  meet  on  the  yth  at 
Staunton,  west  of  the  Blue  Ridge;  but  hardly  had 
they  done  so  before  the  troopers  came  clattering  into 
the  little  town,  and  several  of  the  members  were  cap 
tured  on  their  flight.  Tarleton  had  already  despatched 
a  special  band  to  Monticello,  under  Captain  McLeod, 
to  seize  the  person  of  the  governor.  The  plan  failed, 
however ;  for  Jefferson,  forewarned  in  season,  sent  his 
family  by  carriage  to  a  friend's  house,  safely  distant, 
and  followed  them  on  horseback,  by  a  mountain  path, 
a  few  moments  before  McLeod's  dragoons  surrounded 
the  mansion.  The  enemy  remained  at  Monticello 


Il8  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

less  than  a  day,  and  in  pursuance  of  Tarleton's  orders 
refrained  from  wanton  pillage.  But  Cornwallis  be 
haved  far  differently  while  quartering  for  ten  days  upon 
Jefferson's  other  estate  at  Elk  Hill.  He  destroyed 
the  growing  crops  of  corn  and  tobacco ;  ruined  the 
fences ;  ransacked  all  the  barns ;  carried  off  such 
horses  as  were  fit  for  service,  cutting  the  throats  of 
the  colts ;  and  finally  kidnapped  and  conveyed  away 
thirty  slaves,  to  consign  them  carelessly  to  pestilence 
and  death. 

Jefferson's  second  term  had  already  constitutionally 
expired  on  the  2d  of  June.  He  meant  to  decline  a 
re-election ;  but  the  legislature,  with  its  precarious 
quorum,  refrained  from  choosing  a  successor  when  it 
should  have  done  so.  He  retained  constantly  the 
good- will  and  approbation  of  all  the  chief  continental 
officers  in  command,  —  of  Washington,  Greene,  Steu- 
ben,  and  Lafayette ;  but  now  that,  through  the  stress 
of  invasion,  little  authority  remained  but  martial  law 
enforced  under  their  direction,  it  was  not  strange  if 
some  dissatisfaction  was  felt  in  this  latest  turn  of 
events  by  the  young  governor's  fellow-citizens.  Mur 
muring  is  the  chronic  vent  of  despondency;  and 
none  inculpate  more  clamorously  than  those  who 
would  clear  a  secret  imputation  of  fault  from  their 
own  breasts.  The  flying  legislature,  which  rallied  for 
a  new  stand  at  Staunton  on  the  yth  of  June,  became 
panic-stricken  by  a  false  alarm,  and  in  three  days 
dispersed  again ;  but  not  without  some  harsh  mvec-* 


GOVERNOR  IN   WAR    TIMES.  119 

tives,  from  Jefferson's  political  opponents,  upon  his 
official  conduct.  One  honest  but  impulsive  member 
of  the  House  proposed  a  legislative  inquest.  The 
challenge  was  promptly  accepted  by  Jefferson's 
friends;  no  vote  was  taken,  no  arraignment  made, 
but  a  day  of  hearing  at  the  next  session  was  unani 
mously  agreed  upon.  Unanimously  elected  to  that 
body  by  his  Albemarle  constituents  in  the  autumn, 
Jefferson  took  his  seat  with  the  single  object  of  meeting 
and  refuting  the  charges  against  him.  Happily,  by 
the  time  fixed  for  the  hearing,  the  American  arms 
were  victorious,  and  the  spirit  of  censoriousness  was 
quenched.  On  the  ipth  of  December,  1781,  the  late 
governor  rose  in  his  place  and  avowed  himself  ready 
to  meet  any  charges  or  inquiries  touching  his  late 
official  conduct.  No  one  replied ;  the  accuser  him 
self  was  absent.  He  then  read  the  objections  to  his 
course,  which  had  been  summarized,  and  his  own 
responses  in  writing.  Nearly  every  member  present 
was  silently  cognizant  of  the  truths  as  he  stated  them 
in  defence.  The  House  of  Delegates  at  once,  "and 
by  a  unanimous  vote,  passed  a  resolution  exonerating 
Jefferson  from  all  censure,  and  thanking  him  for  his 
"impartial,  upright,  and  attentive  administration." 
The  Senate  concurring  in  substance,  the  resolution 
stood  unanimously  adopted  by  both  Houses  on  the 
very  day  prescribed  for  the  inquiry.  As  for  an  im 
peachment,  —  as  the  hasty  and  informal  accusation 
was  sometimes  called  during  the  party  heats  of  a  later 
aSe> —  Jefferson's  conduct  was  never  impeached  at 


120  THOMAS  JEFFERSON'. 

all ;  and  Jefferson's  acquittal  of  blame  was  finally  com 
plete  when  George  Nicholas,  his  chief  accuser,  made 
acknowledgment  by  published  letter  that  he  had  acted 
hastily  and  in  the  wrong. 

Meanwhile,  under  the  pressure  of  invasion,  the 
Virginia  legislature  had  chosen  a  new  governor,  Jef 
ferson's  refusal  to  serve  a  third  term  having  been  well 
understood.  The  choice  made  was  according  to  his 
own  desire,  and  a  man  whose  military  habits  and 
experience  might  impart  full  confidence,  —  Gen. 
Thomas  Nelson,  the  commander  of  the  State  militia, 
a  man  of  wealth,  talents,  and  energy.  Nelson  took 
the  field,  using  without  stint  the  arbitrary  powers 
confided  to  him :  drafting  men  for  service,  and  im 
pressing  the  needful  supplies  for  their  subsistence  and 
transportation.  Commanding  the  State  troops  in 
person  at  the  siege  of  Yorktown,  he  ordered  his  own 
house  bombarded  within  the  British  lines,  —  the  most 
valuable  in  the  town.  Yet,  patriotic  and  self-sacri 
ficing  as  he  showed  himself  in  many  ways,  he  made 
an  unpopular  governor ;  he  resigned  from  office 
before  his  term  had  half  ended,  and,  like  Jeffer 
son,  sought  a  vindication  from  the  body  which  had 
elected  him. 

It  is  an  odious  task  flaying  an  impoverished  State, 
whether  one  dallies  with  the  knife  or  applies  it  boldly. 
Jefferson  took  no  pleasure  in  the  retrospect  of  this, 
the  most  painful  period  of  his  whole  public  life.  His 
heart  was  humane  and  sensitive,  and  shrunk  from  the 
calamities  of  necessary  war.  As  a  revolutionist  his 


GOVERNOR  IN  WAR    TIMES.  121 

happier  share  of  the  work  consisted  in  laying  the 
broad  foundations  of  a  new  government  for  the 
people.  And  in  recounting  later  the  events  of  these 
two  unsatisfactory  years,  he  coupled  his  election  as 
governor  with  the  contemporaneous  honour  of  being 
chosen  one  of  the  visitors  of  William  and  Mary  Col 
lege,  where  he  succeeded  in  effecting  some  changes 
for  the  better  before  Williamsburg  ceased  to  be  the 
seat  of  government.  Already  in  the  legislature  had 
he  tried  to  liberalize  the  charter  of  his  seminary,  and 
to  enlarge  its  sphere  into  a  State  university ;  but  re 
ligious  jealousies  were  found  insuperable,  and  war 
postponed  the  whole  task  to  await  the  leisure  of  his 
old  age. 


122  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

CHAPTER   VIII. 

CONGRESS   AND   THE   ORDINANCE   OF   FREEDOM. 
1781-1784. 

THESE  were  not  yet  the  days  of  popular  government 
and  of  fierce  party  struggles,  where  sensitiveness 
to  public  criticism  becomes  regarded  as  a  sort  of 
cowardice.  Jefferson  learned  when  he  grew  older  to 
bear  the  storm  of  calumny  and  vituperation  without 
wincing,  as  the  Indian  brave  bears  torture.  He  loved 
his  domestic  circle  while  yet  it  remained  to  him ; 
he  cared  little  for  official  honours  at  all  except  for 
the  opportunity  of  being  useful  to  his  fellow-citizens ; 
he  wished  popularity  to  attend  good  efforts;  and 
the  misgiving  that  as  governor  he  had  fallen  short 
of  expectation  was  deeply  mortifying  to  his  sensitive 
nature. 

He  turned  disdainfully  from  the  legislature  where 
he  had  appeared  as  an  apologist  for  his  official  con 
duct.  That  its  vindication  was  unanimous  did  not 
heal  the  wound,  nor  had  the  unanimity  with  which 
his  county  returned  him  to  that  body  to  face  hi* 
cusers.  The  sting  of  being  put  upon  the  defen1 
was  deep  enough ;  and  though  arraigned  in  rea 
before  no  other  bar  than  that  of  public  opinion, 
arraignment  was  such  as  tempted  him  to  forswear 


iich 

th« 
/ear™ 


CONGRESS  AND  ORDINANCE  OF  FREEDOM.  123 

public  service  forever.  He  had  had  enough  of  its 
empty  honours.  Nothing  would  evermore  separate 
him  from  his  farm,  his  family,  and  his  books.  No 
slave  was  so  wretched  as  the  minister  of  a  com 
monwealth. 

Thus,  in  his  morbid  state  of  sensibility,  did  he  ex 
aggerate  the  injustice  done  him,  the  loss  of  public 
sympathy,  and  even  the  infirmity  of  his  physical 
health.  He  would  not  so  much  as  attend  any  further 
sessions  of  the  legislature  to  which  he  had  been  elected. 
Madison,  his  most  devoted  friend,  hinted  his  disap 
proval  through  others  as  gently  as  possible  ;  Monroe, 
another  genuine  admirer,  remonstrated  directly  with 
a  blunt  sincerity  which  was  characteristic  of  him ; 
but  all  expostulation  was  in  vain.  Congress  with 
delicate  grace  associated  him  very  promptly  with 
plenipotentiaries  already  abroad  to  treat  for  peace; 
but  this  appointment  he  declined,  because  it  came 
before  he  had  vindicated  his  official  conduct,  and  be 
cause  too  of  domestic  reasons  unexplained.  His  wife 
in  truth  was  by  this  time  in  declining  health,  and 
needed  his  soothing  attentions  to  prolong  existence 
a  little  further  while  the  flame  burned  feebly  in  the 
socket.  The  horrors  of  the  British  invasion  had  im 
pressed  deeply  into  her  nature  his  own  anxieties, 
making  his  grief  the  greater.  When  Arnold  ap 
proached  Richmond,  she  fled  with  an  infant  child 
in  her  arms,  who  soon  after  sickened  and  died. 
Tarleton's  raid  upon  Monticello  and  the  ghastly 
havoc  which  Cornwallis  left  at  Elk  Hill,  her 


124  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

family    inheritance,    shattered    what    little    strength 
remained. 

In  the  sacred  seclusion  of  his  mountain  home  Jef 
ferson  did  not  remain  idle  ;  for  now  he  engaged  him 
self  in  preparing  his  celebrated  "  Notes  on  Virginia." 
Statistics  concerning  the  American  Confederacy  had 
been  ordered  by  the  King  of  France ;  and  M.  de 
Marbois,  Secretary  of  the  French  legation  at  Phila 
delphia,  had  in  consequence  addressed  Jefferson  a 
list  of  twenty-three  questions  designed  for  drawing 
out  such  information  as  pertained  to  his  Common 
wealth.  Jefferson's  answers  were  not  confined  to  dry 
official  facts,  but  he  lavished  upon  this  production  the 
full  wealth  of  information,  official  and  unofficial,  which 
he  had  been  gathering  for  years,  interspersed  with  de 
scriptions  and  profound  reflections  of  his  own.  He 
furnished,  in  fine,  not  a  mere  document,  but  a  volume 
of  good  literature,  cast  in  the  mould  of  a  catechism. 
In  doing  so  he  pleased  an  essential  ally  of  the  United 
States,  and  a  people  whose  polish  and  scientific  at 
tainments  attracted  him  very  strongly.  No  book  of 
semi-official  statistics,  perhaps,  was  ever  made  more 
captivating.  Jefferson  knew  well  the  moral  configura 
tion  of  the  State  which  his  own  father  had  mapped 
out  in  its  geographical  features.  In  1784  a  few  copies 
with  additions  were  privately  printed  in  Paris  by  Jef 
ferson's  order  while  he  was  minister  to  France  ;  and 
the  demand  for  the  book,  at  home  and  abroad,  led  to 
its  formal  publication,  thus  establishing  him  presently 
as  an  author  and  scientist  of  no  mean  attainments. 


CONGRESS  AND  ORDINANCE  OF  FREEDOM.  125 

In  these  "  Notes  on  Virginia  "  Jefferson  took  up  the 
defence  of  his  countrymen  in  a  spirited  manner  against 
French  naturalists  like  Buffon  and  Abbe"  Raynal,  who 
were  then  expatiating  upon  the  false  theory  that  ani 
mals,  and  the  human  race  besides,  degenerated  upon 
the  soil  of  the  New  World ;  and  he  brought  an  arith 
metical  argument  to  bear,  quite  characteristic  of  him, 
against  their  postulate  that  America  had  not  pro 
duced  "  one  man  of  genius  in  a  single  art  or  a  single 


It  was  on  the  6th  of  September,  1782,  and  one 
month  after  the  birth  of  her  last  child,  that  Jefferson 
mourned  the  death  of  his  true  and  gentle  wife ;  and 
young  widower  though  he  now  was,  with  daughters  of 
tender  age  to  be  educated,  he  never  sought  to  mate, 
again.  Over  the  long  suspense  he  had  suffered  near 
her  sick-chamber,  administering  her  medicine  to  the 
last,  nursing,  soothing,  and  watching  in  her  last  illness 
as  tenderly  as  a  woman,  besides  gathering  the  little 
children  and  his  orphaned  wards,  the  Carrs,  to  give 
them  their  daily  tasks,  —  Jefferson  in  his  own  person 
drew  the  veil  of  delicacy.  For  nearly  a  year  the  only 
letter  he  appears  to  have  written  at  all  was  one  which 
he  penned  to  Monroe,  in  the  midst  of  these  anxieties, 
to  answer  its  painful  imputations.  His  deepest  grief 
was  shared  by  no  one.  Solitary  excursions  on  horse 
back  for  many  weeks  followed  the  incessant  vigils  at 
her  bedside. 

But  friends  who  sympathized  respectfully  at  a  dis- 


126  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

tance  felt  that  the  current  of  political  disinclination 
was  turning ;  and  in  about  two  months  from  his  be 
reavement  Congress,  upon  their  hint,  called  Jefferson 
once  more  to  join  the  commissioners  across  the  seas. 
"The  reappointment,"  says  Madison,  "was  agreed  to 
unanimously,  and  without  a  single  adverse  remark." 
Jefferson  received  the  news  almost  with  eagerness  on 
J:he  25th  of  November;  he  accepted  instantly,  and, 
closing  his  affairs  at  Monticello,  repaired  in  the  course 
of  about  three  weeks  to  Philadelphia  to  procure  in 
structions.  In  the  midst  of  the  tedious  delays  in 
departing,  now  because  of  ice  and  now  because  of 
hovering  British  cruisers,  arrived  the  intelligence, 
in  February,  1783,  that  the  preliminaries  of  peace 
were  already  arranged  ;  and  when  the  welcome  news 
was  confirmed,  Jefferson  received  his  countermand, 
and  in  May  went  home  again. 

But  in  the  new  change  of  scenes  he  had  now  shaken 
off  the  stupor  of  mind  which  succeeded  his  wife's 
death,  as  well  as  his  morbid  disrelish  for  public  ser 
vice.  His  State  Legislature  elected  him  the  next 
month  to  the  Continental  Congress ;  and  in  Novem 
ber,  1783,  we  find  him  a  member  of  that  body,  just 
at  the  close  of  the  war,  reporting  in  person  at  Tren 
ton  after  the  humiliating  flight  from  Philadelphia,  and 
adjourning  the  same  month  with  his  fellow-members 
to  Annapolis.  This  was  the  session  of  Congress  dis 
tinguished  by  Washington's  resignation  of  his  military 
commission ;  and  little  as  we  may  connect  Jefferson 
with  the  legislature  of  the  Confederacy,  in  all  the 


CONGRESS  AND  ORDINANCE  OF  FREEDOM.  127 

years  of  its  prolonged  existence,  we  see  him  figuring 
in  the  foreground  of  its  second  dramatic  scene.  With 
his  youthful  friend  and  fellow-signer  of  the  Declara 
tion  Gerry  for  an  associate,  he  served  as  chairman  of 
the  committee  which  arranged  that  affecting  cere 
monial  immortalized  upon  TrumbulFs  canvas.  He 
drew  up  the  impressive  order  of  proceedings;  and 
even  the  felicitous  response  of  Mifflin,  the  President 
of  Congress,  to  General  Washington  has  been,  with 
out  denial,  ascribed  to  his  pen. 

Jefferson's  re-entrance  into  Congress,  though  for  a 
brief  period,  was  fortunate  in  bringing  about  the  es 
tablishment  of  our  coinage  system,  —  the  mo^t  per 
fect,  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say,  that  the  world  has 
ever  experienced.  The  happy  idea  of  applying  the 
decimal  notation  of  money,  in  place  of  the  arbitrary 
pounds,  shillings,  and  pence  to  which  we  had  been 
habituated  as  British  subjects  and  which  we  could  not 
easily  dismiss,  originated  two  years  earlier  with  Gou- 
verneur  Morris,  who  was  assisting  his  celebrated  name 
sake,  Robert  Morris,  in  the  supervising  of  continental 
finances.  His  able  report  to  Congress,  though  sound 
in  the  main,  proposed  in  the  penny  a  unit  too  minute 
and  impracticable  for  ordinary  use ;  but  as  a  member 
of  the  committee  to  which  the  subject  was  referred  in 
1 784,  Jefferson  rescued  the  leading  idea  from  its  false  ex 
crescence  by  proposing  the  dollar  as  the  true  unit,  with 
its  decimal  divisions  and  subdivisions  down  to  the  cop 
per  hundredth  or  cent,  and  with  its  further  multiple  of  a 


128  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

ten-dollar  gold-piece.  Jefferson  and  Morris  discussed 
their  several  views  in  print,  and  after  a  postponement 
the  committee  agreed  to  report  the  plan  of  the  former, 
and  it  was  adopted  the  next  year.  To  Morris,  there 
fore,  belongs  the  honour  of  proposing  the  decimal 
system ;  while  Jefferson  gains  rightfully  a  new  claim, 
which  he  never  made,  to  popularity  as  father  of  the 
American  dollar.  He  stood  all  his  life  for  a  still 
broader  reform  against  the  stolid  force  of  British 
habits ;  he  wished  the  decimal  system  applied  to  all 
the  weights  and  measures  as  well  as  to  money.  Con 
gress  has  express  power,  under  our  present  Constitu 
tion,  to  regulate  this  subject  as  well  as  the  other; 
and  some  day,  when  a  new  statesman  leads  American 
opinion  who  can  educate,  this  other  change  will  come 
about,  and  the  wonder  will  then  be  that  it  did  not 
come  earlier. 

Another  service,  and  one  of  momentous  import,  as 
sociates  Jefferson  with  the  famous  Ordinance  of  the 
Northwestern  Territory.  That  great  tract  north  of 
the  Ohio  River,  out  of  which  were  afterward  carved 
those  five  free  States,  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  Michigan, 
and  Wisconsin,  had  been  tendered  by  Virginia  for  the 
benefit  of  the  whole  Confederacy,  in  January,  1781; 
Jefferson  while  governor  of  the  State  transmitting  the 
resolution  of  its  legislature  to  that  effect.  The  for 
malities  of  a  transfer  had  been  hitherto  delayed  ;  but 
a  deed  of  cession,  bearing  date  March  i,  1784,  was 
now  executed  by  the  Virginia  delegates  in  Congress, 
with  Jefferson  at  the  head.  The  Confederacy  ac- 


CONGRESS  AND  ORDINANCE  OF  FREEDOM.  1 29 

^ 

cepted  the  gift,  without  admitting  Virginia's  claim  to 
sole  ownership  of  that  region,  but  anxious  to  encour 
age  by  so  sisterly  an  example  the  relinquishment  of  all 
such  territorial  claims  to  the  unsettled  West  for  the 
benefit  of  the  whole  Union. 

A  few  days  afterward  a  committee  of  Congress, 
with  Jefferson  as  chairman,  prepared  a  plan  for  the 
temporary  government  of  the  common  Western  terri 
tory.  The  draft  of  their  report  in  Jefferson's  hand 
writing  is  still  among  the  public  archives.  The  whole 
wilderness  of  the  Mississippi  basin  to  the  eastern  bank 
of  that  great  river,  our  remotest  barrier,  was  brought 
into  contemplation.  This  report  proposed,  accord 
ingly,  that  whatever  domain  might  vest  in  the  United 
States  at  any  time  by  the  cession  of  individual  States 
and  by  Indian  purchase  should  be  formed  into  dis 
tinct  States,  subject  each  to  a  temporary  government 
until  the  population  sufficed  for  establishing  a  per 
manent  local  constitution  on  the  basis  of  self-govern 
ment  ;  after  which,  upon  the  assent  of  Congress,  given 
as  the  articles  of  Confederation  required,  such  State, 
with  not  less  than  twenty  thousand  inhabitants,  should 
be  admitted  on  an  equal  footing  with  the  original 
States. 

Ten  temporary  States,  by  a  single  division  of  this 
great  area  between  the  thirty-first  and  forty-seventh 
parallels,  with  names  and  boundaries  ready  made, 
made  too  much  for  immediate  legislation.  And  one 
may  smile  at  some  of  the  fanciful  appellatives  which 
Jefferson's  report  laboured  to  bestow  so  prematurely 
9 


130  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

upon  these  unborn  daughters  of  the  Union.  Usage,  to 
be  sure,  had  already  dignified  such  sentimental  names 
as  Virginia,  Carolina,  and  even  Pennsylvania;  but 
American  citizens  of  our  own  later  time  will  agree  that 
Michigan  sounds  better  than  Michigania,  Illinois  than 
Illinoia;  and  as  for  Assenisipia,  Metropotamia,  Poly- 
potamia,  and  Pelisipia,  one  willingly  consigns  them  to 
classical  lore  and  the  apothecary  shop.  .  In  most  re 
spects,  however,  the  scheme  proposed  for  these  future 
States  was  only  crude  in  having  to  conform  to  the 
imperfect  plan  of  union  which  then  existed.  Canada 
or  other  external  colonies  might  have  joined  the  old 
thirteen,  to  be  sure,  on  terms  prescribed;  but  for 
new  States  erected  from  within,  these  early  Articles  of 
Union  made  no  distinct  provision.  In  Jefferson's  plan 
one  traces,  therefore,  the  first  lines  of  the  method 
upon  which  the  sublime  experiment  of  State  propaga 
tion  has  since  proceeded,  —  at  this  early  date  almost 
a  usurpation,  but  sanctioned  and  fully  provided  for  in 
our  ampler  charter  of  1787. 

In  each  of  the  new  States  to  be  thus  erected  from 
the  common  soil  the  government  was  to  be  republican 
in  form,  and  slavery  was  not  to  exist  in  any  of  them 
after  the  year  1 800.  This  last  fundamental  article  was 
the  historical  one.  In  all  other  material  portions,  ex 
cept  for  the  romantic  names,  Jefferson's  report  was 
adopted  in  April ;  but  the  clause  which  ordained  free 
dom  was  stricken  out  for  want  of  a  majority  of  States 
in  its  favour.  Every  member  from  the  Northern  States 
voted  for  it ;  all  but  two  from  the  South  (Jefferson 


CONGRESS  AND  ORDINANCE  OF  FREEDOM.  131 

and  Williamson)  voted  against  it.  Jefferson's  two  col 
leagues  arrayed  Virginia  on  the  negative  side  of  the 
question  in  spite  of  him ;  Williamson  divided  the  vote 
of  North  Carolina ;  New  Jersey  lost  its  chance  of  ex 
pression  by  having  but  one  delegate  present ;  and 
both  Delaware  and  Georgia  by  having  no  delegates  at 
all.  Only  six  States  of  the  thirteen,  in  consequence, 
voted  to  retain  the  clause  of  Jefferson's  plan  which 
prohibited  slavery. 

Defeat  under  such  qualifying  circumstances  could 
not  be  final  and  decisive.  At  a  more  favourable  op 
portunity,  three  years  later,  and  while  Jefferson  him 
self  was  abroad,  the  slavery  restriction  was  renewed 
in  another  form,  and  with  reference  to  the  territory 
northwest  of  the  Ohio  alone.  That  world-renowned 
Ordinance  of  1787  passed  with  the  aid  of  Jefferson's 
Virginia  friends,  while  the  framers  of  a  new  federal 
constitution  were  in  session  at  Philadelphia.  The  last 
glorious  achievement  of  the  expiring  Continental  Con 
gress,  it  was  reaffirmed  afterward  by  the  first  Congress 
of  the  new  Union,  and  approved  by  our  first  immortal 
President.  No  wonder  that  Nathan  Dane  and  Rufus 
King,  men  from  antislavery  States,  should  have  derived 
lustre  from  the  part  they  took  in  preparing  and  promot 
ing  a  measure  so  noble.  A  tier  of  energetic  States  thus 
erected  in  the  Mississippi  Valley  gave  freedom  the 
vital  preponderance  in  due  time  by  their  powerful  ex 
ample.  But  even  here,  as  in  the  fundamental  veri 
ties  of  our  Declaration  of  Independence,  Jefferson's 
name  first  blazons  the  record.  He  gave  the  earliest 


132  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

impulse  to  congressional  regulation,  in  the  common 
domain,  for  excluding  and  forever  prohibiting  slavery. 
Freedom,  which  the  Ordinance  of  1787  established 
as  partial  only  and  by  way  of  compromise,  his  earlier 
ordinance  would  have  made  the  boon  of  our  whole 
territorial  jurisdiction,  south  of  the  Ohio  River  as 
well  as  north.  When,  about  midway  in  this  nine 
teenth  century,  the  struggle  of  hostile  systems  began 
in  earnest,  the  party  of  freedom  marched  to  political 
victory,  baptized  by  the  name  of  the  national  party 
he  had  once  founded,  and  organized  upon  the  simple 
platform  of  the  Ordinance  of  1787,  or  terrkorial 
exclusion,  reaffirmed  in  its  new  adaptation  as  Jeffer 
son's  Ordinance.  Well  would  it  have  been  for  his 
own  infatuated  State  and  section  in  that  generation, 
had  they  but  accepted  the  instruction  of  their  greatest 
of  political  prophets. 


MINISTER    TO  FRANCE.  133 


CHAPTER   IX. 

MINISTER  TO   FRANCE. 
1784-1789- 

ON  the  7th  of  May,  1784,  Congress  resolved  to  send 
a  third  minister  plenipotentiary  to  Europe  to  join  Dr. 
Franklin  and  John  Adams,  who  were  already  there, 
in  negotiating  commercial  treaties.  Jefferson  received 
the  appointment;  and  leaving  Annapolis  on  the  nth 
of  the  same  month,  he  set  out  for  Boston,  from  whose 
port  he  sailed,  quietly  and  unostentatiously,  on  Mon 
day  the  5th  of  July,  while  one  of  those  hundred  civic 
orators  was  holding  forth  at  Faneuil  Hall.  This  was 
probably  the  only  visit  to  New  England  that  Jefferson 
ever  made ;  and  before  taking  passage  in  the  tardy 
merchant-vessel  he  found  time  to  extend  his  tour  to 
New  Hampshire  and  Vermont  in  quest  of  information 
regarding  the  commerce  of  the  Middle  and  Eastern 
States ;  receiving  conspicuous  attentions  for  his  scholar 
ship  from  Harvard  and  Yale,  and  honoured  in  Boston 
and  elsewhere  as  a  public  character,  though  hardly,  it 
would  seem,  as  author  of  the  Declaration. 

On  the  6th  of  August  the  new  plenipotentiary 
reached  Paris,  crossing  the  British  Channel  after  a 
smooth  and  delightful  ocean  voyage.  He  called  at 
once  on  Dr.  Franklin  at  his  pleasant  abode  in  the 


134  THOMAS  JEFFERSON, 

suburban  village  of  Passy;  and  the  two  wrote  John 
Adams,  who  was  then  at  The  Hague,  to  come  and  join 
them.  He  did  so ;  and  the  three  ministers,  after 
drafting  together  a  commercial  treaty  based  upon 
the  late  instructions  of  Congress,  undertook  to  interest 
continental  powers  on  the  subject.  But  though  a  lib 
eral  and  original  treaty,  full  of  humane  proposals  for 
alleviating  the  evils  of  war  and  shipwreck  and  far  in 
advance  of  the  times,  negotiation  could  make  but 
little  progress  among  the  European  powers.  A  dis 
tant  multitude  of  successful  rebels,  who  but  yesterday 
were  obscure  colonists  under  the  British  rule,  and 
whose  commerce  had  hitherto  been  carried  on  under 
the  British  flag,  could  hardly  hope  for  a  footing  yet  as 
preceptors  of  international  law  to  the  proudest  of 
earth's  sovereigns.  Our  dishonoured  debts  were  better 
known  than  our  resources ;  the  feebleness  of  our  bond 
of  union  better  than  its  strength.  Toward  friendly 
commercial  intercourse  under  the  stipulations  of  a 
treaty,  "  Old  Frederick  of  Prussia,"  as  Jefferson  was 
wont  to  style  him,  —  of  all  the  European  crowned 
heads  the  only  one  that  held  a  brain,  —  inclined  most 
cordially ;  and  with  him,  at  length,  an  arrangement 
was  concluded.  Denmark  and  Tuscany  also  entered 
into  negotiations;  but  the  other  powers  appearing 
indifferent,  our  ministers  did  not  think  it  proper  to 
press  them.  Even  the  friendly  Count  de  Vergennes, 
astute  diplomatist  that  he  was,  thought  it  better  to 
leave  French  intercourse  as  it  already  stood,  trusting 
all  future  changes  to  reciprocal  legislation.  To  his 


MINISTER    TO   FRANCE.  135 

mind,  evidently,  the  third  minister  sent  over  by  Con 
gress  to  gain  commercial  advantages  was  superfluous. 

Franklin,  who  was  now  aged  and  infirm,  having  in 
the  spring  of  1785  obtained  leave  to  return  home, 
Congress  commissioned  Jefferson  on  the  loth  of  March 
to  succeed  him  as  minister  to  France.  He  wit 
nessed  that  memorable  scene  when  the  benevolent 
philosopher  left  Passy  on  the  i2th  of  July  to  be 
conveyed  to  the  coast  in  the  queen's  own  travelling- 
litter,  and  attended  by  the  homage,  profound  and 
sincere,  of  the  whole  French  people.  No  man  was 
more  admirably  adapted  than  Franklin  to  cement  his 
country  in  sympathy  with  its  first  great  ally  and  friend 
by  a  personal  popularity ;  and  Jefferson  felt  that  the 
task  was  not  an  easy  one  to  prevent  such  influence 
from  being  missed.  "  You  replace  Dr.  Franklin,  I 
hear,"  said  the  Count  de  Vergennes  to  him,  when 
the  new  appointment  was  announced.  "  I  succeed ; 
no  one  can  replace  him,"  was  the  graceful  reply. 

In  its  broad  auspices  for  America's  future,  our  new 
selection  for  this  post  was  most  fortunate.  Franklin 
and  Jefferson  had  strong  traits  in  common,  and  their 
congenial  affinities  made  the  one  the  fit  introducer  of 
the  other.  Their  school  of  political  thought  was  alike  ; 
they  had  shared  as  actors  together  in  great  events ; 
their  mutual  confidence  was  genuine.  Both  loved 
France ;  both  sympathized  with  France  beyond  most 
Anglo-Americans ;  both  inclined  in  conversation  to 
aphorisms  and  pointed  repartee  such  as  the  French 
delight  in  ;  both  laid  claims  to  high  regard  in  polished 


I36  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

French  society,  by  the  stores  they  disclosed  of  a  fresh 
and  distant  experience,  and  by  their  skill  in  diversify 
ing  dry  politics  with  discourse  upon  natural  philosophy. 
If  Franklin's  scientific  reputation  was  the  greater  be 
cause  he  drew  down  lightning  from  the  skies,  —  an 
agent  as  yet  too  fearful  and  mysterious  to  be  harnessed 
to  man's  activities,  —  Jefferson  could  warm  man's 
genius  into  invention  by  his  enthusiastic  spirit,  while 
in  the  classic,  literary,  and  artistic  direction  his  range 
far  excelled  his  predecessor's.  On  animal  anatomy 
he  confuted  Buffon,  the  great  French  naturalist,  to  his 
face  ;  his  "  Notes  on  Virginia,"  which  got  into  public 
circulation  almost  by  an  accident,  interested  the  savants 
by  its  compendious  facts  and  speculative  discussions ; 
while  his  bill  for  religious  freedom  was  a  torch  to 
the  public  aspiration.  Two  such  Americans  in  suc 
cession,  then,  at  the  court  of  France  might  well  have 
intensified  the  tide  of  revolution  which  led  on  to 
democracy.  Franklin's  sturdy  simplicity  had  been 
set  in  contrast  against  the  splendid  but  licentious  prodi 
gality  of  the  old  courtly  France  which  was  now  pass 
ing  away.  Jefferson,  still  young  enough  to  be  plastic 
and  impressionable,  felt  the  rising  influence  of  that 
speculative  and  philosophic  spirit  which,  audacious 
and  unvenerating,  resolved  all  human  problems  into 
faith  in  man's  perfectibility. 

Jefferson  as  a  diplomat  was  faithful  and  industrious. 
All  fair-minded  contemporaries  have  admitted  the 
excellence  of  his  work ;  but  very  little  could  be  prac- 


MINISTER    TO  FRANCE.  137 

tically  accomplished  as  to  the  specific  measures  which 
employed  him.     Most  of  our  American  commerce, 
just  after  the  war,  had  struck  into  the  familiar  track  of 
British  intercourse.    His  duties  at  Paris  were  confined 
accordingly  to  a  few  objects  :  to  bringing  in  American 
whale-oils,    salted  fish,  and    salted   meats   on  better 
terms ;  to  retrieving  Virginian  tobacco  from  the  mo 
nopoly  of  a  French  money-ring,  to  which  belonged  the 
king  himself  and  Jefferson's  personal  friend  Robert 
Morris ;  and  to  bringing  in  the  rice  of  South  Carolina 
upon  equal  terms  with  that  of  Piedmont,  Egypt,  and 
the  Levant.     In  these  efforts,  seconded  by  the  zealous 
influence  of  Lafayette,  whose  life  for  half  a  century 
proved  the  strongest  link  that  bound  America  in  per 
manent  sympathy  with  this  country,  he  succeeded  as 
fairly  as  could  be  expected,  and  found  the  French 
court    disposed   to   befriend    and    indulge   America 
wherever  its  own  selfish  interests  were  unconcerned. 
The  Count  de  Vergennes  had  the  reputation  of  ex 
ceeding  slipperiness  among  the  slippery  diplomatists 
from  other  courts  who  most  surrounded  him.     But 
"  as  he  saw,"  says  Jefferson,  "  that  I  had  no  indirect 
views,  practised  no  subtleties,  meddled  in  no  intrigues, 
pursued  no  concealed  object,  I  found  him  as  frank, 
as  honourable,  as  easy  of  access  to  reason,   as  any 
man  with  whom   I  had  ever  done  business  ;   and  I 
must  say  the  same  for  his  successor,  Montmorin,  one 
of  the  most  honest  and  worthy  of  human  beings." 
Wherever  any  of  his  fellow-countrymen   were   in 
distress,  as  happened  often  in  these  early  entangle- 


138  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

ments  of  our  independent  commerce,  Jefferson  be 
stowed  his  best  zeal,  tact,  and  solicitation  to  relieve 
them ;  and  it  was  remarked  that  he  took  up  promptly 
every  proper  case  which  came  to  his  notice,  not  like 
an  official  who  was  doing  a  favour  and  might  there 
fore  await  his  leisure,  but  with  the  urgent  persistency 
of  an  attorney,  or  rather,  one  should  say,  of  a  deeply 
interested  friend.  One  topic  that  profoundly  stirred 
his  sympathy  related  to  the  Barbary  Powers,  those 
scourgers  of  civilization,  who  still  held  the  keys  to  the 
Mediterranean  and  forced  Christendom  to  render 
tribute.  The  only  alternatives  to  their  lawless  inflic 
tions  at  the  penalty  of  an  enormous  ransom  were 
perpetual  tribute,  war,  or  the  cessation  of  all  com 
merce  under  the  flag  through  and  adjacent  to  the 
Straits  of  Gibraltar.  The  great  maritime  powers  of 
Europe  —  England,  France,  Spain,  and  the  States-Gen 
eral  —  submitted  to  the  first  disgraceful  expedient,  and 
expected  the  United  States  to  do  the  same.  But  Jef 
ferson,  disdaining  such  degradation,  drew  up  presently 
a  noble  plan  for  associating  against  these  corsair  coun 
tries  the  powers  that  had  been  robbed  by  them,  and 
scourging  the  offenders  into  decency,  so  as  to  guar 
antee  a  permanent  peace  without  price.  This  plan 
Jefferson  submitted  in  detail  to  the  diplomatic  corps 
at  Versailles ;  but  the  power  of  the  American  Con 
federacy,  never  adequate  even  to  internal  administra 
tion  in  times  of  peace,  was  now  dwindling  rapidly,  and 
Europe  went  on  paying  its  tribute  in  the  accustomed 
way.  Jefferson,  again  far  in  advance  of  the  civilized 


MINISTER    TO  FRANCE.  139 

age,  found  his  later  opportunity  in  the  new  century, 
as  we  shall  see,  when  he  became  President. 

But  Jefferson's  correspondence  during  these  years 
shows  him  still  more  earnestly  engaged  in  semi 
official  and  gratuitous  labours  for  the  benefit  of  his 
fellow-citizens  at  home.  He  interested  himself  on 
behalf  of  Ledyard,  the  traveller,  for  the  exploration 
of  northwestern  America.  How  did  his  impression 
able  mind  gather  in  the  whole  hoard  of  knowledge 
that  Europe  had  accumulated,  in  order  to  scatter  the 
information  far  and  wide  for  his  own  country's  ad 
vantage  ;  observing  vigilantly  and  minutely  every 
advance  in  science  and  the  useful  arts  about  him  with 
this  latter  end  in  view.  Astronomy,  agriculture,  me 
chanical  discoveries,  language,  the  fine  arts,  mingle 
with  the  epistolary  comments  upon  current  politics, 
whale-oil,  and  foreign  society,  which  flowed  from  a 
pen  never  more  facile,  fluent,  and  fervid  than  just  at 
present.  He  describes  a  screw-propeller  which  a 
Parisian  has  just  invented,  suggesting  parenthetically 
that  a  screw  under  water  might  work  better.  He 
sees  muskets  constructed  on  the  novel  and  admirable 
principle  of  making  all  the  parts  adjustable.  He 
mentions  the  astounding  success  of  the  Watts  steam- 
engine,  just  put  in  operation,  by  means  of  which  "  a 
peck  and  a  half  of  coal  performs  as  much  work  as 
a  horse  in  a  day ;  "  and  when  on  a  visit  to  London 
he  makes  a  special  inspection  of  one  of  these  engines 
at  work.  He  praises  a  French  machine  "  for  copying 
letters  at  a  single  stroke,"  which  he  has  turned  to  his 


14°  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

own  personal  use.  He  writes  to  the  President  of 
William  and  Mary  College  announcing  Herschel's 
discoveries  of  double  stars ;  and  being  dubbed  a 
Doctor  of  Laws  about  this  time,  he  keeps  Harvard 
and  Yale  informed  of  the  curious  books  and  learned 
conjectures  that  he  comes  across.  The  metal  pla 
tinum  he  considers  in  its  adaptability  to  the  specular 
telescope  ;  and  musician  still,  —  albeit  that  a  fracture 
in  his  right  wrist,  unskilfully  treated  by  a  Paris  surgeon, 
put  an  end  about  this  time  to  his  violin  performances, 
—  we  find  him  greatly  delighted  in  the  metronome, 
and  scouring  about  to  find  the  latest  style  of  a  tongue 
to  fit  a  friend's  harpsichord.  Many  were  the  commis 
sions  he  executed  for  his  native  State :  from  new 
lamps  for  Richard  Henry  Lee,  and  rare  volumes  for 
the  private  collections  of  Madison,  Wythe,  and  Mon 
roe,  to  an  artistic  model  for  the  Richmond  capitol 
and  the  employment  of  Houdon  at  Virginia's  instance 
upon  his  celebrated  statue  of  Washington.  He  ex 
pended  the  most  generous  efforts  to  interest  the 
planting  States  in  olive  culture,  giving  a  passing  sug 
gestion  of  cotton  as  "  a  precious  resource ;  "  and  he 
crossed  the  Alps  to  gather  specimens  of  the  Lombardy 
rice  and  study  its  modes  of  preparation,  so  that  South 
Carolina,  by  improving  her  home  production,  might 
edge  in  a  supply  of  what  was  then  the  standing  dish  of 
France  in  the  penitential  season.1  In  short,  whatever 

1  American  rice,  like  American  salted  beef,  was  not  prepared 
daintily  enough  for  these  European  markets;  and  Jefferson 
studied  assiduously  how  these  faults  might  be  overcome  by  his 
countrymen. 


MINISTER    TO  FRANCE.  141 

topics  he  might  choose  to  handle  in  his  letters  were 
treated  on  all  occasions  with  a  vigour  of  language 
and  shrewdness  of  observation  which  make  the  corre 
spondence  piquant  and  readable  to  this  very  day. 
Had  not  Jefferson  been  a  statesman,  he  might  cer 
tainly  have  set  the  fashion  for  modern  journalism. 

In  March,  1786,  Jefferson  crossed  the  Channel  to 
aid  his  colleague,  John  Adams,  at  London,  in  some 
pending  business.  He  spent  about  seven  weeks  in 
England  at  this  time,  visiting  with  his  older  friend 
some  of  the  celebrated  places,  interesting  himself  in 
ornamental  gardens  and  the  mechanical  arts,  and 
gaining  what  useful  information  he  might  in  a  desul 
tory  way.  But  his  heart  did  not  go  out  warmly  to  the 
surroundings  as  it  had  done  in  France,  and  that  fact 
was  ominous  of  future  public  results.  Both  he  and 
Adams  felt  like  intruders  upon  a  company  whose  dis 
position  was  indeed  freezingly  disdainful.  Society 
gave  the  two  ministers  the  cold  shoulder.  Their  re 
peated  efforts  to  negotiate  for  American  commerce 
proved  a  mortifying  failure.  Nothing  could  have 
been  more  ungracious  than  the  royal  behaviour  when 
Jefferson  was  presented  at  court ;  King  George  turned 
his  back  upon  his  late  rebellious  subjects,  and  the  hint 
was  not  lost  upon  the  circle  in  attendance.  His  minister 
for  foreign  affairs  more  courteously  evaded  a  business 
interview  without  directly  declining  it,  until  Jefferson, 
tired  of  his  false  excuses,  took  a  polite  leave  and  went 
back  to  congenial  Paris.  "That  nation  hates  us,"  he 


142  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

wrote  of  England ;  "  their  ministers  hate  us,  and  their 
king  more  than  all  other  men."  Their  interest  was 
their  ruling  passion.  They  considered  our  trade  im 
portant  to  them ;  but  this  they  thought  they  could 
pocket  without  concession,  and,  so  convinced,  they 
would  make  no  terms  of  commerce.  These  views, 
though  harsh,  were  such  as  Adams  entertained,  and 
we  may  believe  them  accurate. 

This  was  an  age  of  upheaval  in  continental  politics ; 
and  it  was  impossible  that  one  of  Jefferson's  sympa 
thetic  feelings  should  perceive  and  not  be  profoundly 
affected.  French  frenzy  for  human  brotherhood  and 
French  scepticism  in  religion  moved  him  somewhat 
from  his  moorings ;  but  he  never  lapsed  into  the  fol 
lies  and  exaggerations  of  the  French  Democracy.  His 
own  philosophy  of  the  rights  of  men,  though  sincere 
and  liberal,  had  been  taught  in  an  earlier  and  a  differ 
ent  school.  There  was  nothing  fickle  or  capricious  in 
his  attitude  toward  events ;  and  moreover  his  bias  was 
too  practical  to  admit  of  his  ever  being  carried  far  by 
innate  ideas  apart  from  their  adaptiveness  to  the  im 
mediate  environment.  With  French  habits  of  ex 
pression  and  grace  of  manners,  an  inclination  to 
generalize  and  epitomize,  fondness  for  novelties  in 
art,  science,  and  philosophy,  affection  for  young  men, 
a  delicacy  of  taste  which  reached  down  to  wines  and 
cookery,  Jefferson  seemed  born  to  infuse  Parisian  in 
fluence  into  our  sturdy  Saxon  society;  but  he  was 
withal  a  true-born  Anglo-American.  His  tastes  con 
tinued  simple,  though  bereavement  had  driven  him 


MINISTER    TO  FRANCE.  143 

from  home ;  he  could  not  chase  the  passing  excite 
ment  with  that  free  abandonment  characteristic  of  a 
Frenchman,  who  can  be  a  voluptuary  one  day,  and 
a  tiger  the  next ;  he  did  not  lose  his  head,  to  use  the 
common  phrase.  In  religion  he  was  no  cynic  nor 
derider,  like  atheists  of  the  Voltaire  school.  It  was 
because  he  had  such  implicit  faith  in  liberty,  equality, 
and  fraternity  that  he  questioned  the  binding  force  of 
creeds.  There  was  nothing  in  him  of  the  libertine  ; 
and  regularly  in  his  correspondence  at  this  period  of 
unusual  temptation  we  see  him  disapproving  of  the 
sensuality  and  the  lax  marital  virtue  which  was  be 
coming  so  fashionable  about  him,  reiterating  con 
stantly  the  idea  that  America  was  the  true  home  for 
Americans,  tranquil  domestic  love  infinitely  preferable 
to  loose  and  intriguing  pursuits  of  pleasure,  rural  sur 
roundings  far  better  than  life  in  the  great  cities.  He 
questioned  the  utility  of  sending  American  youths  to 
Europe  for  an  education  at  all,  and  still  more  de 
cidedly  the  propriety  of  keeping  them  there  to  ac 
quire  a  fondness  for  European  luxury  and  dissipation 
and  a  contempt  for  the  plainness  of  social  intercourse 
in  their  own  country.  "  It  appears  to  me,"  he  wrote 
from  abroad,  "  that  an  American  coming  to  Europe 
for  education  loses  in  his  knowledge,  in  his  morals, 
in  his  health,  in  his  habits,  and  in  his  happiness.  I 
had  entertained  only  doubts  on  this  head  before  I 
came  to  Europe ;  what  I  see  and  hear  since  I  came 
her£  proves  more  than  I  even  suspected." 

What  Jefferson  learned  chiefly  by  actual  contact 


144  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

with  the  European  courts  was  to  hate  kings  and  a 
privileged  aristocracy  most  heartily.  The  dazzle  and 
luxury  which  surrounded  him  could  not  blind  him 
to  the  deplorable  condition  of  the  great  commune ; 
and  the  truth  of  Voltaire's  observation  recurred  con 
tinually  to  his  mind,  that  every  man  in  France  must 
be  the  hammer  or  the  anvil.  His  mind  ran  to  com 
parisons  with  the  favoured  lot  of  the  common  people 
in  America.  "  In  spite  of  the  mildness  of  their  gov 
ernors,"  he  wrote  at  this  time,  "  the  people  are  ground 
to  powder  by  the  vices  of  the  form  of  government. 
Of  twenty  millions  of  people  supposed  to  be  in  France 
I  am  of  opinion  there  are  nineteen  millions  more 
wretched,  more  accursed,  in  every  circumstance  of 
human  existence,  than  the  most  conspicuously 
wretched  individual  of  the  whole  United  States." 
Nor  was  he  enamoured  of  the  royal  specimens  of  mon 
archy  which  met  his  penetrating  gaze.  His  hatred 
of  hereditary  rulers  increased  with  each  new  threaten 
ing  episode  in  Parisian  events.  "  No  race  of  kings 
has  ever  presented  above  one  man  of  common  sense 
in  twenty  generations.  The  best  they  can  do  is  to 
leave  things  to  their  ministers;  and  what  are  their 
ministers  but  a  committee  badly  chosen?  If  the 
kings  ever  meddle,  it  is  to  do  harm." 

Though  Jefferson  was  remarkably  careful  all  his  life 
not  to  send  shafts  at  religious  feeling  by  a  jest  or  a 
sophism,  but  regarded  such  subjects  as  sacred  to  each 
individual  conscience,  it  would  not  be  strange  if  in 


MINISTER   TO  FRANCE.  145 

this  gay  and  mocking  society  of  philosophers  a  young 
widower  living  in  the  polluted  atmosphere  of  the 
French  capital  should  have  come  closer  in  life  and 
thought  than  ever  again  to  scepticism  in  religion.  It 
was  to  these  years  that  the  very  few  flippant  and  irrev 
erent  passages  to  be  found  in  all  of  Jefferson's  writings 
—  such  as  the  "  twenty  Gods  or  no  God  "  argument  of 
his  "  Notes  on  Virginia  "  —  are  mostly  to  be  traced. 
A  more  consoling  and  appropriate  epitaph,  one  thinks, 
might  have  been  culled  from  the  Scriptures  and  Chris 
tian  poetry  than  that  Greek  verse  from  the  Iliad  which 
Jefferson  inscribed  in  marble  upon  his  consort's  grave  ; 
and  more  judicious  advice  given  to  a  young  nephew 
than  to  divest  his  mind  of  all  bias  over  the  Bible,  and, 
applying  his  own  measurement  of  reason,  question 
boldly  if  need  be  even  the  existence  of  a  God,  —  as 
though  eighteen  centuries  had  not  established  the 
truths  of  Christianity  sufficiently  to  put  the  burden  of 
proof  upon  its  opponents  !  But  the  devoutness  of 
his  tender  years,  the  knowledge  of  hymns,  ritual,  and 
Scripture  lessons  taught  at  his  mother's  knee  never 
quite  departed  from  him.  We  shall  see  him  more 
conservative  again  in  thought,  more  reverent,  as  the 
years  roll  on,  reticent  though  he  always  remained  as 
to  his  religious  belief;  and  it  is  certain  that  he  never 
imbibed  French  infidelity  in  its  full  extent,  nor  scoffed 
at  religion  or  morality,  nor  forsook  his  higher  ideals 
of  life  to  pander  to  the  fleshly  passions. 

Jefferson's  domestic  life  more  than  anything  else 
reveals  the  real  refinement  of  his  nature.     Tenderly 

10 


146  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

devoted  to  his  wife  and  to  her  memory,  and  never 
replacing  her  lost  companionship,  he  was  both  father 
and  mother  to  the  young  daughters  she  left  behind. 
From  his  re-entrance  into  the  Continental  Congress 
after  her  death  began  a  series  of  family  letters,  ad 
dressed  first  to  his  children  and  later  to  his  sons-in- 
law  and  grandchildren,  of  which  —  so  proud  were  they 
of  the  correspondence  —  whole  archives  have  been 
preserved.  These  letters  were  full  of  tender  confi 
dences  and  advice ;  and  not  a  bitter  or  censorious 
word  is  to  be  found  throughout  their  long  files.  The 
atmosphere  of  his  home  life  was  suffused  with  love 
and  serenity  through  all  the  later  acerbities  of  poli 
tics.  To  Jefferson's  parental  afflictions  we  have  alluded 
already.  His  only  son  died  when  less  than  a  month 
old ;  three  daughters  followed  early  to  the  grave,  — 
the  youngest,  angelic  in  her  sensibilities,  soon  after  he 
landed  in  France.  Jefferson  had  taken  with  him 
Martha,  his  eldest  child,  leaving  the  two  others  be 
hind  ;  but  this  latest  death  made  him  very  anxious  to 
have  her  last  remaining  sister  with  him.  Little  Polly, 
or  Mary,  as  she  was  called  (known  when  she  grew  up 
as  Maria),  clung  childishly  to  her  Virginia  aunt,  and 
stratagem  was  employed  to  get  her  on  board  the  ves 
sel  which  sailed  for  England,  whence  by  the  offices  of 
good  Abigail  Adams  she  was  restored  to  her  father's 
arms.  The  experiment  of  educating  these  two  young 
girls  abroad  proved  unsatisfying  to  him,  and  for  their 
sake  particularly  he  desired  to  get  home  again.  Martha, 
who  was  placed  at  an  excellent  convent  school,  wrote 


MINISTER    TO  FRANCE.  14? 

her  father  a  gravely  composed  letter  reciting  her  wishes 
to  be  allowed  to  take  the  veil  and  withdraw  from 
earthly  scenes.  The  gentleness  with  which  he  brought 
her  tuition  to  an  end  and  drew  her  mind  from  its  pre 
cocious  purpose  without  ever  a  word  on  the  subject 
the  daughter  has  since  related. 

This  last  incident  illustrates  an  important  trait  of 
Jefferson  which  was  manifest  in  every  relation  of  life, 
—  a  quick  and  ready  tact,  which,  appreciating  any 
collision  of  a  purpose  with  his  own,  set  itself  to  work 
to  accomplish  the  desired  end  without  wounding  and, 
wherever  his  authority  justified,  without  discussion. 
To  use  a  phrase  which  others  have  applied  to  him, 
he,  like  the  patriot  Hampden,  took  things  habitually 
by  the  soft  handle.  He  received  advice  with  patience 
and  good  humour,  avoided  personal  quarrels,  sought 
out  the  harmonies  of  other  men  in  conversation,  and 
yet  maintained  his  original  purpose,  unless  he  saw  fit 
reason  to  change  it.  This  arose  in  the  main  from 
a  kindly  and  sympathetic  nature,  tolerant  of  the 
frailties  which  perpetually  contaminate  man's  good  in 
tentions,  but  conscious  nevertheless  of  noble  aspira 
tions,  and  possessed  of  the  courage  of  leadership. 
But  contrasting,  as  it  did  so  greatly,  with  the  rash, 
impetuous,  irritable,  and  often  overbearing  disposition 
of  his  contemporary  John  Adams,  this  trait  in  Jeffer 
son,  which  was  part  of  his  nature,  has  been  confounded 
sometimes  by  his  personal  enemies  with  that  artful 
duplicity,  associated  peculiarly  with  French  diplomacy, 
which  covers  up  intrigue  with  polite  manners,  —  as 


148  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

though  that,  too,  as  well  as  his  politics  and  religion, 
were  imbibed  abroad.  Had  Jefferson's  aims  in  life 
been  base,  immoral,  self-aggrandizing,  hypocritical, 
instead  of  liberal,  philanthropic,  and  sincere,  the 
charge  might  carry  more  weight. 

Jefferson  was  naturally  fond  of  children,  quick  and 
painstaking  to  observe  their  wants  and  inclinations, 
and  even  feminine  in  the  delicacy  with  which  he 
guided  them  by  education  and  discipline.  It  is  re 
lated  of  him  upon  good  authority  that  no  child  or 
grandchild  of  his  ever  received  a  harsh  or  angry  word 
from  him  on  one  solitary  occasion,  and  that  no  mem 
ber  of  his  family  saw  him  exhibit  passion  but  barely 
twice  during  his  whole  life.  For  Martha  and  Maria 
he  purchased  and  provided  so  carefully  while  they 
were  in  Paris  that  not  even  a  pair  of  shoestrings,  it  was 
said,  would  he  allow  his  confidential  servant  to  buy 
for  them ;  and  they  in  return,  aware  of  his  solicitude 
to  gratify  them,  were  unwilling  to  purchase  the  most 
trifling  things  without  consulting  his  taste,  which 
to  them  was  infallible.  "They  venerated  him," 
Martha  was  wont  to  say,  "  as  wiser  and  better  than 
other  men ;  he  seemed  to  them  to  know  everything, 
even  the  thoughts  in  their  minds,  all  their  untold 
wishes ;  they  wondered  they  did  not  fear  him,  yet 
they  did  not  any  more  than  they  did  companions 
of  their  own  age." 

Jefferson's  sojourn  abroad  was  at  the  outbreak  of 
the  French  Revolution.  He  witnessed  at  Paris  some 


MINISTER   TO  FRANCE  149 

of  those  stirring  scenes  which  Carlyle  has  pictured  so 
vividly,  but  with  false  insight.  He  saw  the  assembly 
of  Notables  convened  by  King  Louis  at  Versailles  on 
the  22d  of  February,  1787,  —  that  first  appeal  to  the 
people  to  press  taxation  like  liege  subjects,  and  fill  up 
the  deep  deficit  of  misrule,  court  favouritism,  and  prodi 
gal  luxury.  He  marked  the  strong  pressure  instead 
for  reforms  in  administration  ;  the  loud  clamour  of  the 
people  for  assembling  the  States- General ;  royalty's 
reluctant  assent ;  the  ominous  gathering  of  the  irre 
sistible  third  estate  of  France,  swayed  by  the  match 
less  Mirabeau;  the  call,  dismissal,  and  recall  of 
Necker,  the  financier ;  the  bread  processions  in  tur 
bulent  Paris;  the  Swiss  Guards  about  the  Versailles 
palace  •  the  downfall  of  the  Bastille ;  and  those  mo 
mentary  harbingers  of  harmonious  government  when 
the  ill-starred  Louis,  under  Lafayette's  escort,  showed 
himself  to  the  huzzaing  multitude  with  the  new  na 
tional  cockade  on  his  hat. 

Jefferson  took  a  conspicuous  and  trusted  part  in 
some  of  these  stupendous  events,  maintaining  at  the 
same  time  the  discretion  of  an  accredited  envoy.  His 
establishment,  which  he  kept  up  in  style  sufficient  to 
consume  his  large  salary,  —  not  ostentatiously,  but 
with  liberal  and  easy  hospitality,  —  became  the  nat 
ural  headquarters  of  French  officers  who  had  served 
in  the  American  war.  With  these  and  the  purest  of 
the  patriots  —  foremost  among  whom  was  Lafayette, 
their  leader,  who  patterned  himself  after  his  revered 
Washington  —  Jefferson  kept  up  very  cordial  relations ; 


ISO  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

while  his  vivacious  intercourse  with  the  diplomats 
of  other  European  powers,  who  were  constantly  pry 
ing  into  court  secrets  and  comparing  notes  together, 
gave  him  good  knowledge  of  what  was  going  on. 
There  were  members  of  the  king's  ministerial  circle 
who  hoped  for  some  stable  settlement  with  the  French 
people  arranged  with  the  personal  assistance  of  a 
minister  so  popular.  In  fact,  soon  after  the  States- 
General  had  resolved  itself  into  a  National  Assembly, 
and  the  situation  seemed  most  opportune,  Jefferson 
urged  most  strenuously  an  immediate  compromise  on 
a  constitutional  basis  which  the  king  was  thought  ready 
to  grant :  freedom  of  the  person,  of  conscience,  of 
the  press,  with  inviolate  trial  by  jury ;  a  representative 
legislature,  to  meet  annually,  originating  laws  and 
maintaining  the  exclusive  right  to  tax  and  appro 
priate  ;  a  responsible  ministry.  But  the  popular  party 
wavered,  and  all  France  was  soon  swept  into  the 
fierce  current. 

The  power  of  self-control  under  strong  pressure  of 
provocation  is  essential  to  the  true  conduct  of  a  revo 
lution.  Anglo-Americans  have  admirably  succeeded 
by  its  possession  where  nations  of  more  headlong  sus 
ceptibilities  fail.  Jefferson,  though  deeply  interested 
in  the  problem  here  developing,  was  not  carried  away 
by  the  illusions  of  inflamed  and  misguided  zeal.  France 
did  not  convert  him ;  he  would  have  Americanized 
France,  or  rather  have  seen  her  people  happy  as  soon 
as  possible  under  a  duly  constrained  monarchy,  which 
suited  best  the  immediate  situation,  and  which  he  al- 


MINISTER    TO  FRANCE.  151 

ways  continued  to  think  the  king,  so  far  as  Marie 
Antoinette,  his  haughty  consort,  might  not  sway  him, 
would  have  administered  faithfully  as  long  as  he  lived. 
Jefferson's  mission  ceased  at  this  interesting  point. 
He  had  for  more  than  a  year  been  soliciting  leave  to 
return  home  temporarily  for  private  arrangements. 
His  friend  John  Adams  had  already  departed,  to  be 
come  the  Vice-President  of  these  regenerated  United 
States,  whose  new  government  went  into  effect  in  the 
spring  of  1789.  Leave  of  absence  reached  Jefferson 
the  last  of  August  in  that  same  year,  and  on  the  26th 
of  September  he  left  Paris  for  Havre,  not  considering 
his  departure,  as  it  really  proved,  a  final  one.  Cross 
ing  the  Channel  for  the  last  time,  he  took  passage  with 
his  two  daughters  in  an  English  sailing-vessel,  which 
reached  Norfolk  on  the  23d  of  November;  and  be 
fore  the  year  ended  they  were  once  more  domesti 
cated  at  Monticello. 

Jefferson  while  abroad  remained  an  American  in 
every  fibre,  as  his  correspondence  shows.  But  of 
France,  when  recounting  long  after  the  incidents  of  his 
foreign  experience,  he  praised  its  pre-eminence  among 
the  nations  of  the  earth.  "  A  more  benevolent  peo 
ple,"  he  records,  "  I  have  never  known,  nor  greater 
warmth  and  devotedness  in  their  select  friendships.  .  .  . 
Their  eminence,  too,  in  science,  the  communicative 
dispositions  of  their  scientific  men,  the  politeness  of 
the  general  manners,  the  ease  and  vivacity  of  their 
conversation,  give  a  charm  to  their  society,  to  be  found 
nowhere  else."  In  short,  as  he  concluded,  if  put  to 


152  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

the  test,  like  the  generals  with  Themistocles  after  the 
battle  of  Salamis,  his  first  choice  of  a  country  to  live 
in  was  certainly  his  own  America,  but  his  second 
would  be  France. 

In  his  more  immediate  anticipations  of  the  French 
Revolution  Jefferson  of  course  was  disappointed,  like 
all  other  ardent  and  liberal  spirits  the  world  over. 
But  in  its  broader  and  more  remote  results  he  saw,  we 
may  still  believe,  the  prophetic  trend  of  that  momen 
tous  conflict.  "As  yet,"  he  wrote  in  1821,  to  sum  up 
the  record  of  progress  to  that  date,  "  we  are  but  in  the 
first  chapter  of  its  history.  The  appeal  to  the  rights 
of  man,  which  has  been  made  in  the  United  States, 
was  taken  up  by  France,  first  of  the  European  nations. 
From  her  the  spirit  has  spread  over  those  of  the  South. 
The  tyrants  of  the  North  have  allied,  indeed,  against 
it  j  but  it  is  irresistible." 


SECRETARY  OF  STAT£._  153 

~ 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 
CHAPTER  Jb<^ 

SECRETARY    OF    STATE. 
1790-1794. 


ON  his  way  home  from  Norfolk,  and  while  paying  a 
visit  to  his  brother-in-law,  Mr.  Eppes,  Jefferson  re 
ceived  by  express  messenger  a  letter  from  President 
Washington,  dated  at  New  York,  which  tendered  him 
the  office  of  Secretary  of  State.  Madison  had  sounded 
him  already  on  the  subject  of  entering  the  Cabinet, 
most  probably  at  Washington's  personal  instance. 
Jefferson  regarded  the  proffer  with  real  regret;  his 
wish  had  been  to  return  presently  to  Paris  and  watch  the 
course  of  the  new  European  struggle  against  oppression. 
In  his  immediate  reply  he  expressed  his  unwilling 
ness  to  the  proposed  transfer  as  strongly  as  his  sense  of 
duty  and  his  reverent  and  affectionate  feelings  towards 
Washington  personally  would  permit.  The  President 
again  wrote  in  January,  Madison  having  in  the  mean 
time  visited  Monticello  and  disabused  Jefferson's  mind 
concerning  some  of  the  duties  of  the  new  Secretary 
ship  ;  whereupon  Jefferson  accepted  his  appointment. 
Very  delicately  in  these  days  did  the  office  seek  the 
man;  and  no  administration  of  this  Republic  ever 
moved  with  such  elevated  dignity  as  the  first,  for  all 
the  appointments  of  our  peerless  President  were  his 
own. 


154  THOMAS  j EPPERSON. 

Jefferson  reached  New  York  City,  the  first  temporary 
seat  of  federal  authority,  on  the  2ist  of  March,  1790, 
a  full  year  after  the  constitutional  government  had 
taken  legitimate  effect.  Washington's  administration 
was  already  organized  and  in  fair  working  order. 
Congress  had  re-assembled  for  business ;  but  its  first 
session  of  splendid  and  efficient  legislation  was  over. 
During  the  interval  of  Jefferson's  stay  at  Monticello, 
his  elder  daughter,  Martha,  had  been  wedded  hap 
pily  to  one  of  the  Tuckahoe  Randolphs,  the  grandson 
of  his  father's  life-long  friend;  and  while  passing 
through  Philadelphia  he  paid  a  pious  visit  to  the  ven 
erable  Franklin,  who  was  lying  on  a  bed  of  sickness 
from  which  he  never  again  rose. 

It  is  worth  while  to  notice  here  with  what  views  of 
the  new  and  more  perfect  Union,  as  projected  and  set 
in  operation  while  he  remained  abroad,  Jefferson  en 
tered  upon  the  routine  of  his  present  official  duties. 
He  and  John  Adams,  of  all  great  sons  of  the  earlier 
and  later  epochs,  were  farthest  removed  from  the 
scene  as  the  old  Confederacy  lapsed  rapidly  into  chaos 
and  disorder  ;  and  if  their  views,  sometimes  compared 
in  friendship,  were  a  little  unstable  at  such  a  dis 
tance,  it  should  not  be  wondered  at ;  for  London 
and  Paris,  in  those  days  of  slow  navigation,  were 
as  far  from  New  York  or  Philadelphia  for  an  inter 
change  of  news  as  they  would  now  be  from  Japan  by 
steamer  and  overland  rail,  supposing  the  telegraph 
eliminated.  Jefferson,  for  his  own  part,  while  appre- 


SECRETARVOF  STATE.  155 

elating  the  advantage  of  a  new  federal  government 
which  could  "walk  on  its  own  legs,"  instead  of  lean 
ing  for  support  on  the  State  legislatures,  had  perfect 
confidence  in  the  capacity  of  a  well-informed  people 
to  set  things  right  under  one  system  or  the  other.  He 
had  not  believed  with  Europe  and  the  British  press 
that  America  was  lapsing  into  anarchy ;  the  separation 
of  such  States  as  Maine,  Vermont,  and  Kentucky  he 
foresaw  would  come  sooner  or  later.  He  had  sailed 
from  America  in  1784  impressed  with  the  idea  that  a 
few  simple  amendments  might  brace  the  old  Confed 
eracy  into  the  full  vigour  essential  to  its  maintenance. 
Not  even  the  Shays  insurrection  in  Massachusetts  dis 
turbed  his  equanimity  in  that  respect ;  for,  applying 
the  arithmetical  argument  of  which  he  was  so  fond,  an 
insurrection  in  one  of  thirteen  States,  in  the  course  of 
eleven  years  of  Union,  would  amount  to  but  one  in 
any  particular  State  for  nearly  a  century  and  a  half,  or 
less  than  had  happened  in  any  other  government  upon 
which  the  sun  ever  shone.  In  a  sort  of  casual  and 
irresponsible  way  did  he  thus  discourse  serenely  from 
Paris  upon  the  clear  gain  between  "a  light  and  a 
heavy  government."  He  did  not  wish  such  tumults 
punished  severely.  "The  basis  of  our  government 
being  the  opinion  of  the  people,  the  very  first  object 
should  be  to  keep  that  right ;  and  were  it  left  me  to 
decide  whether  we  should  have  a  government  without 
newspapers  or  newspapers  without  a  government,  I 
should  not  hesitate  a  moment  to  prefer  the  latter; 
but  I  should  mean  that  every  man  should  receive 
those  papers,  and  be  capable  of  reading  them." 


156  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

Meantime  the  statesmen  who  watched  to  better  ad 
vantage  upon  the  spot  the  fatal  tendencies  of  this  Con 
federacy  to  dismemberment,  pushed  on  the  scheme 
of  a  constitutional  convention  ;  Madison  and  Hamilton 
giving  unitedly  the  strongest  impulse  to  the  plan,  while 
Washington,  as  was  most  judicious,  held  the  force  of 
his  preponderating  sanction  in  reserve.  Madison 
kept  his  distant  friend  informed  of  the  movement  at 
each  successive  stage ;  and  after  the  doors  of  the 
secret  convention  of  1787  had  swung  open  at  Phila 
delphia,  revealing  the  plan  of  a  new  composite  gov 
ernment  under  a  new  constitution,  he  posted  to  Jeffer 
son  a  copy.  Jefferson's  first  impressions  were  about  as 
much  favourable  as  unfavourable ;  and  most  of  all  he 
was  so  disappointed  in  finding  that  neither  a  bill  of 
rights  nor  rotation  in  the  presidential  chair  had  been 
provided  for,  that  he  declared  himself  "  nearly  a  neu 
tral."  He  would  have  fixed  the  executive  tenure  at 
seven  years  absolutely,  with  no  right  of  re-election. 
Still,  however,  he  liked  the  idea  of  a  central  govern 
ment  going  on  without  recurrence  to  the  States,  the 
separation  of  executive  and  judiciary  from  the  legisla 
ture  upon  the  Montesquieu  principle,  and  a  congress 
composed  of  two  houses.  And  he  finally  aided  the 
adoption  of  the  instrument  in  his  native  State,  where 
the  division  among  his  political  friends  was  so  stubborn 
and  irreconcilable,  by  declaring  his  final  preference  for 
adoption,  with  the  unconditional  proposal  of  new 
amendments  by  way  of  appeal  to  the  public  honour, 
after  the  example  he  had  admired  in  Massachusetts. 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE.  157 

His  weight  thus  thrown  into  the  scales  at  the  criti 
cal  and  opportune  moment,  Jefferson  took  his  stand 
deservedly  among  the  real  supporters,  though  not  the 
originators,  of  America's  new  fundamental  charter. 
Pleased  with  his  course,  which  evinced  sincerity  and 
sound  judgment,  —  and  moved,  moreover,  by  feelings 
of  personal  esteem  and  friendship,  as  well  as  apprecia 
tion  for  his  illustrious  public  services,  —  Washington, 
when  taking  the  helm  of  administration,  to  which 
with  rare  unanimity  he  had  been  called,  honoured 
Jefferson  with  the  first  and  most  dignified  place  in  his 
official  confidence.  He  chose,  too,  from  his  own  na 
tive  State,  whence  he  had  taken  another  cabinet 
adviser,  and  where  many  distinguished  men  were  still 
so  reluctant  that  reconcilers  were  considered  by  him 
of  the  greatest  consequence.  Only  one,  legitimately 
absent  from  American  politics  for  the  past  five  years, 
could  have  said,  with  the  new  Secretary  of  State,  of 
the  party  lines  already  vanishing  :  "  I  am  neither  Fed 
eralist  nor  anti- Federalist ;  I  am  of  neither  party,  nor 
yet  a  trimmer  between  parties." 

The  first  Secretary  of  State  under  the  present  fed-  \ 
eral  government,  —  for  his  appointment  long  ante-  j 
dated   his   acceptance   of    the    position,  —  Jefferson 
encountered  his  established  colleagues  of  the  Cabinet 
with  cheerful  good-humour.  The  constitutional  amend 
ments  he  most  desired  —  all  excepting  the  one  long) 
term  of  presidential  tenure  —  had  been  duly  proposed 
by  Congress  to  the  States,  and  were  in  course  of  final 


158  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

adoption.  He  had  been  pleased  while  still  abroad  to 
see  a  simple  title  conferred  by  Congress  upon  Ameri 
ca's  chief  magistrate,  and,  much  too  sanguine,  hoped 
that  the  terms  Excellency,  Honour,  Worship,  Es 
quire,  and  even  Mr.,  would  soon  disappear  from 
among  us.  Hamilton's  financial  plans  for  funding  the 
public  debt  absorbed  the  chief  interest  of  this  second 
session  ;  and  not  yet  comprehending  the  bearing  of  that 
Secretary's  cherished  schemes  of  federal  aggrandize 
ment,  Jefferson  obligingly  played  pacificator  to  help 
his  fellow-Secretary  through  the  hardest  strait  of  legis 
lation,  by  making  a  dinner-party  for  him  and  one  or 
two  of  his  own  Southern  friends,  which  led  to  an  ar 
rangement  by  which  the  pet  project  of  the  Treasury 
for  assuming  the  State  revolutionary  debts  was  carried 
through  the  two  Houses,  by  a  few  changes  of  indi 
vidual  votes,  in  alliance  with  the  bill  for  locating  the 
permanent  capital  on  the  Potomac. 

To  Hamilton  belongs  the  lasting  honour  of  founding 
the  national  credit  of  this  new  Union  at  the  outset 
upon  the  firm  rock  of  punctilious  good  faith.  But 
State  credit  was  not  placed  by  his  endeavours  on  an 
equally  sound  basis,  his  controlling  purpose  being  to 
make  the  influence  of  the  old  thirteen  Common 
wealths  wholly  and  forever  subsidiary  and  dependent 
upon  the  nation.  In  the  distressful  years  long  after 
which  followed  the  financial  panic  of  1837,  was  felt 
the  baleful  influence  of  State  repudiation,  and  the 
whole  Union  was  asked  to  assume  once  more  the  ag 
gregate  burden  of  their  separate  obligations.  Hamil- 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE.  159 

ton's  bias  to  centralization  was  made  more  apparent 
in  the  third  and  final  session  of  Congress,  which  met 
December,  1791,  in  its  next  temporary  abode  at 
Philadelphia.  There  excise  and  a  national  bank  were 
the  two  chief  themes  of  the  Treasury  report ;  and  by 
that  time  the  two  profoundest  statesmen  of  Washing 
ton's  Cabinet  bitterly  antagonized.  From  Hamilton's 
immediate  triumph  in  procuring  the  sanction  of  Con 
gress  and  the  Executive  to  the  latter  establishment, 
and  to  his  incidental  claim  of  implied  powers  under 
the  new  Constitution  "  to  make  all  laws  which  shall  be 
necessary  and  proper,"  dates  the  new  era  of  political 
dissension  on  a  national  scale. 

We  shall  not  enter  here  into  any  historical  disquisi 
tion  upon  American  events  or  American  political  par 
ties.  Individual  biography  does  not  admit  of  so  broad 
a  scope  to  the  narrative ;  and  with  the  present  writer, 
at  least,  the  historical  narrative  of  these  times  would 
be  a  repetition.  It  did  not  take  long,  after  the  first 
polish  of  personal  acquaintance  was  worn  off,  for  two 
such  representatives  of  opposing  ideas  as  Jefferson 
and  Hamilton  to  understand  one  another;  nor,  so 
understanding,  for  each  to  oppose  the  other  with 
all  his  might.  Those  two  vivacious  intellects  were 
typical  of  all  the  political  strife  of  the  next  thirty 
years  to  shape  the  course  of  the  federal  government, 
construe  the  Constitution,  and  mould  the  destinies 
of  this  American  continent.  Hamilton  was  for  re 
pressing  popular  tendencies,  and  keeping  Democracy 


160  THOMAS  JEFFERSON, 

restrained  by  the  strong  hand  of  order  and  authority ; 
Jefferson  was  for  giving  Democracy  the  freest  scope 
possible,  and  trusting  willingly  to  the  experiment  of 
recognizing  public  opinion  and  the  common  sense  as 
the  ultimate  repository  of  power.  Hamilton  believed 
in  Statecraft,  was  dazzled  by  the  example  of  the 
Caesars,  desired  a  government  whose  strength  lay  in 
attaching  wealth  and  privilege  to  its  standard ;  while 
Jefferson  considered  that  no  government  on  earth 
could  be  so  strong  as  that  which  offered  its  best  advan 
tages  to  every  one,  and  advanced  its  standard  not  so 
much  by  fostering  as  by  giving  equal  opportunities. 
Hamilton,  a  waif  from  the  British  West  Indies,  for 
tuitously  placed  in  New  York's  aristocratic  circle,  had 
no  State  prepossessions  whatever,  and  looked  upon 
the  State  establishments  as  a  confusion  and  incum- 
brance  to  continental  unity ;  seeing  in  them  nothing 
but  the  absurdity  of  an  entity  within  an  entity,  he  would 
have  had  them  reduced,  expunged,  eradicated,  in  order 
that  the  national  government  might  hold  full  sway  un 
embarrassed.  He  was  for  centralization,  for  imperial 
ism,  for  a  strong  national  administration  which  would 
pervade  every  part  of  this  Union ;  and  in  theory  for  a 
life-long,  or  even  a  hereditary,  executive  or  monarch, 
State  governors  holding  their  commissions  at  the  na 
tional  pleasure,  and  a  Congress  constructed  as  nearly 
as  possible  upon  the  English  model  of  Lords  and  Com 
mons.  Jefferson,  native  born  and  bred,  and  as  really 
as  most  Virginians  of  native  stock,  a  loyal  son  of  the 
oldest  and  proudest  of  American  commonwealths,  be- 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE.  161 

lieved  States  and  State  rights  "  a  precious  reliance ;  " 
and  though,  perhaps,  not  fully  alive  to  the  expand 
ing  necessities  of  a  general  government  endowed 
with  a  few  such  splendid  attributes  as  power  over 
foreign  relations,  army,  navy,  and  the  regulation  of 
all  new  territories,  he  apprehended  the  sublime  fit 
ness  for  this  continent  of  the  novel  complexity  of  dis 
tributed  rather  than  consolidated  functions/  Hamilton 
had  a  predilection,  which  possibly  Jefferson's  ardent 
imagination  exaggerated,  for  whatever  was  British ;  and 
even  British  corruption  and  the  insidious  attachment 
of  interests  as  then  practised  in  Parliament  and  the 
elections  by  a  British  ministry  which  aimed  at  success, 
seemed  part  of  the  legitimate  science  of  government. 
Jefferson's  French  prepossessions  and  British  antipathy, 
which  Hamilton  certainly  exaggerated,  —  believing 
him  imbued  with  the  false  and  visionary  philanthropy, 
the  scepticism,  the  levelling  follies,  of  the  French 
revolution,  a  disciple  where  he  had  been  more  nearly 
an  educator  of  foreign  sentiment,  —  tinctured  his  own 
contending  views  of  foreign  and  domestic  policy; 
he  disdained  corporate  wealth,  loved  simple  equality, 
simple  manners,  the  open  life,  and  dreaded  every 
avenue  which  opened  to  bribery.  In  short,  Hamilton 
was  for  re-erecting  and  re-enacting  Europe  in  America ; 
while  Jefferson  felt  fervent  faith  that  Heaven  had  re 
served  this  hemisphere  for  a  political  destiny  and 
experience  of  its  own,  through  whose  influence  the 
Old  World  might,  perhaps,  in  time  become  reor 
ganized.  Hamilton  believed  the  free  tendencies  of 

IL 


1 62  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

mankind  were  essentially  vicious,  and  needed  domi 
nation  ;  while  Jefferson  believed  that  human  and  in 
dividual  domination  had  been,  in  the  world's  annals 
of  the  past,  the  fatal  obstacle  to  public  virtue.  Each, 
in  his  own  political  creed,  was  unquestionably  sincere  ; 
and  abler  advocates  or  administrators  of  such  oppos 
ing  systems  this  American  world  has  never  seen. 

Not  only  the  ideas  but  the  methods  of  the  two 
Secretaries  were  strongly  in  contrast.  The  one  com 
pelled,  if  he  could  ;  the  other  persuaded.  Hamilton 
was  imperious,  self-asserting,  ready  on  every  emer 
gency  with  a  plan  which  reached  from  top  to  bottom 
of  the  controversy,  leaving  nothing  for  his  followers  to 
suggest ;  all  the  odium,  as  well  as  all  the  praise,  he 
was  ready  to  take  upon  his  own  shoulders.  Except 
for  the  limitations  of  his  British  temperament  and  sur 
roundings  and  an  undoubted  sense  of  honour,  he  might 
have  made  a  Caesar  or  Napoleon,  for  his  instincts  were 
military  and  his  genius  lay  in  commanding.  But  Jef 
ferson  allowed  much  for  the  foibles  and  vanities  of 
other  men ;  far  from  egotistical  himself,  he  would  put 
forward  associates  to  take  their  share  in  the  measures 
of  his  own  suggestion ;  he  carried  out  his  intentions 
through  agencies,  conformably  to  the  requirements  of 
a  republican  government ;  he  was  wary,  supple,  open 
to  the  arguments  of  other  men ;  easily  popular,  as 
Hamilton  could  never  become,  yet  firm  of  purpose, 
and  an  originator.  Hamilton,  though  personally  un- 
corrupt,  and  valuing  fame  and  glory  far  beyond  all 
pecuniary  gain,  believed  in  the  insidious  use  of  public 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE.  163 

favours  and  patronage  to  attach  support ;  force  and  in 
terest  were  to  his  mind  the  alternatives  of  government, 
and  he  leaned  heavily  upon  the  property  class.  Jef 
ferson,  on  the  other  hand,  leaned  upon  the  common 
people,  upon  the  farmers  and  landowners,  and  laboured 
for  a  government  which  would  be  secure  of  their  en 
thusiasm  because  it  guarded  their  liberties. 

It  is  right  that  posterity  should  trust  in  the  recti 
tude  of  the  fathers  of  our  American  Constitution,  of 
those  who  first  placed  and  set  in  motion  the  machinery 
which  that  Constitution  ordained.  It  is  right  that  we 
should  cherish  the  belief  that,  whatever  the  theoretical 
preferences  of  any  of  them,  they  were  honest  and  true 
in  desiring  to  work  out  the  full  experiment  loyally,  and 
to  keep  the  new  system,  at  all  events,  from  becoming 
subverted  as  long  as  possible.  But  this  was  an  era  of 
political  dogmatizing,  political  doubts ;  and  the  porten 
tous  conflict  which  was  preparing  across  the  ocean  gave 
abundant  scope  to  theorists  of  either  school.  Jefferson 
had  left  France  in  the  full  fervour  of  natural  rights  and 
zealous  for  the  world's  reformation,  and  he  was  amazed 
and  mortified  at  the  preferences  he  heard  expressed  by 
Federalist  leaders  in  New  York  for  British  and  heredi 
tary  government.  "An  apostate  I  could  not  be," 
he  writes  of  such  discussions,  "  nor  yet  a  hypocrite ; 
and  I  found  myself,  for  the  most  part,  the  only  advo 
cate  on  the  republican  side  of  the  question,  unless 
among  the  guests  there  chanced  to  be  some  member 
of  that  party  from  the  legislative  Houses."  Even 


1 64  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

his  friend  John  Adams  he  found  abating  in  the  re 
sentment  against  British  forms  which  the  two  had 
cherished  in  common  when  dancing  their  vain  attend 
ance  in  Downing  Street.  "Purge  the  British  Con 
stitution  of  its  corruption,"  once  observed  the  Vice- 
President  in  the  freedom  of  a  dinner-party,  "  and  give 
to  its  popular  branch  equality  of  representation,  and 
it  would  be  the  most  perfect  constitution  ever  devised 
by  the  wit  of  man."  To  which  Hamilton  replied, 
after  a  pause  :  "  Purge  it  of  its  corruption,  and  give  to 
its  popular  branch  equality  of  representation,  and  it 
would  become  an  impracticable  government ;  as  it 
stands  at  present,  with  all  its  defects,  it  is  the  most 
perfect  government  which  ever  existed." 

Politics  handles  rough  tools,  and  applies  stronger 
epithets  than  tranquil  reflection  should  warrant.  Quick 
and  intuitive  in  his  perceptions,  of  intense  convictions, 
and  strongly  emotional,  —  strong  at  heart,  moreover, 
at  the  thought  that  the  new  French  Revolution,  which 
had  so  stirred  his  profound  sympathies,  should  be 
viewed  by  leading  minds  at  home  through  the  cold 
crystal  medium  of  British  misconception,  for  even 
Adams  soon  announced  publicly  his  disbelief  in  it, 
—  Jefferson  speedily  entered  upon  the  task  of  writing 
down  the  men  and  the  set  which  surrounded  the  first 
President,  and  bringing  public  opinion  to  bear  for  their 
eventual  discomfiture.  He  made  secret  minutes  of 
conversations  tending  to  confirm  his  suspicions  of 
monarchical  designs ;  indulging  at  the  time  no  more 
than  his  usual  recording  habit,  but  preserving  the  in- 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE.  165 

formation  thus  gathered,  and  publishing  it  after  the 
lapse  of  a  quarter  of  a  century,  together  with  other 
memoranda  which  pertained  to  his  Cabinet  experience, 
under  the  name  of  "  The  Anas."  l  Beginning  in  his 
private  letters,  moreover,  to  warn  his  friends  against 
"  a  sect  among  us  who  believe  that  the  English  Con 
stitution  is  perfect,"  he  presently  wrote  of  Hamilton 
and  the  Vice-President  as  leaders  of  a  British  faction, 
whose  efforts,  more  or  less  secret,  were  to  draw  America 
toward  "  that  half-way  house  "  of  monarchy.  "  Brit 
ish  faction "  was  a  phrase  which  stung.  Hamil 
ton,  Knox,  Gouverneur  Morris,  and  various  Eastern 
Federalists  were  the  men  chiefly  impaled  by  it ;  and 
Jefferson  in  return  was  widely  denounced  by  them,  in 
these  years  of  party  strife  and  with  certainly  not  bet 
ter  justice,  as  a  false  generalizer,  a  worshipper  of 
France,  a  philosopher  of  crude  abstractions,  a  hypo 
crite,  a  flatterer  of  the  people,  or,  as  one  intelligent 
Federalist  went  so  far  as  to  style  him,  a  "  semi- 
maniac." 

Madison  and   most  Southern   statesmen,  together 

1  These  celebrated  "  three  volumes  bound  in  marble  paper  " 
among  Jefferson's  manuscripts,  as  he  styled  them,  though  sub 
jected  before  publication  to  what  he  called  "  a  calm  revisal," 
are  not  written  in  the  most  dispassionate  style ;  and  some  of  his 
friends  regretted  afterward  that  "  The  Anas  "  were  ever  given 
to  the  world.  But  the  author  has  stated  his  own  reason  for 
publication :  he  wished  to  furnish  counteracting  testimony 
against  contemporary  annalists  of  the  period  who  leaned  too 
strongly  to  the  other  side ;  and  in  this  he  has  succeeded, 
though  not  perhaps  fully  proving  his  own  case. 


1 66  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

with  a  powerful  element  in  the  Middle  States,  began 
to  draw  off  from  the  Federalists,  as  the  new  financial 
projects  of  the  Treasury  for  consolidating  the  govern 
ment  developed.  Perhaps  in  their  private  conferences 
Jefferson  learned  from  his  chief  disciple  how  Hamil 
ton  had  shown  his  un-American  bent  in  the  secret  de 
bates  of  1787,  and  flung  away  a  brilliant  opportunity. 
While  following  up  his  National  Bank  success  with 
other  schemes  of  patronage,  such  as  subsidizing  our 
manufactures,  Hamilton  found  not  only  that  his  plans 
were  balked  in  Congress  by  a  growing  opposition,  but 
that  the  very  honour  of  the  administration  of  his  Treas 
ury  was  assaulted  unsparingly.  Jefferson  instigated 
much  of  the  opposition,  and,  as  a  further  means  of 
reaching  public  sentiment,  encouraged  Freneau,  a 
spirited  writer  and  a  college  mate  of  Madison,  to  start 
at  Philadelphia  an  opposition  newspaper;  the  usual 
journals  in  the  vicinity  of  the  new  government,  such 
as  Fenno's  "  Gazette,"  which  followed  it  obsequiously 
from  New  York,  having  hitherto  breathed  nothing  but 
heavy  incense  and  adulation.  Hamilton,  who  was  om 
nipresent  in  anonymous  appeals  through  the  federal 
press,  took  up  his  own  pen,  as  the  fall  elections  of 
1792  approached,  and  calling  general  attention  to  a 
clerkship  which  Freneau  held  in  Jefferson's  depart 
ment,  made  the  scathing  assertion  that  its  editor  was 
pensioned  by  public  money  at  the  Secretary  of  State's 
disposal,  to  vilify  the  administration  and  disturb  the 
public  peace.  Freneau  made  answer  for  himself  that 
his  trifling  salary  of  $250  as  a  translating  clerk  did 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE.  167 

not  affect  his  opinions  in  any  way  as  an  editor.  Jef 
ferson  made  no  public  reply ;  but  the  gathering  an 
tagonism  of  the  two  Cabinet  officers  poured  itself  out 
in  private  recriminations  to  the  President,  —  then  rest 
ing  at  Mount  Vernon,  but  at  the  urgent  solicitation  of 
both  rivals  consenting  to  stand  as  candidate  for  a  sec 
ond  term,  —  which  he  tried  in  vain  to  compose. 

Wearied  of  all  strife  over  issues  less  portentous 
than  liberty  and  union,  conscious  of  the  creeping 
infirmities  of  old  age,  sensitive  to  the  growing  cen- 
soriousness  of  the  press  and  the  rivalries  between 
two  younger  members  of  his  administration,  both  of 
whom  from  long  acquaintance  were  very  dear  to 
him,  Washington  would  have  retired  from  office  at 
the  end  of  his  first  four  years'  term ;  but  the  whole 
people  still  wanted  him,  and  new  political  parties 
dared  not  fledge  their  wings  thus  early.  Even  he, 
with  all  his  wisdom  in  things  present,  failed  to  ap 
prehend  the  inevitable  tendency  of  free  government 
to  party  dissension ;  and  in  trying  to  make  advisers 
co-operate  so  utterly  differing  from  each  other  in 
their  views  of  policy,  and  withal  so  able,  he  had  over 
taxed  his  own  superb  capabilities.  Integrity,  ca 
pacity,  and  conspicuousness  made  the  criterion  by 
which  Washington  called  men  into  his  administration ; 
but  that  test  soon  proved  insufficient,  for  another  trait 
needful  to  all  efficient  administration  is  congeniality 
of  sentiment. 

Hamilton's  purpose  to  drive  Jefferson  from  the 
Cabinet  was  forestalled  by  his  own  opponent.  Am- 


1 68  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

bitious  though  Jefferson  might  have  been  to  lead 
forward  to  popular  achievements,  no  American  of  any 
age  took  less  personal  concern  to  gain  or  keep  public 
office.  Early  in  1792  he  had  frankly  expressed  to 
Washington  his  intention  of  vacating  the  present  post 
when  his  chiefs  first  term  was  completed.  He  had 
his  own  delicate  perception  of  the  impropriety  of 
warring  from  within  upon  the  administration ;  and  as 
the  natural  leader  of  those  who  were  opposed  to  the 
coercing  and  consolidating  tendencies  of  the  Feder 
alists  in  power,  he  sought  an  independent  vantage- 
ground.  When  appeared  Hamilton's  newspaper  as 
sault  upon  the  Secretary  of  State,  —  which  was  not  so 
covert  in  style  and  expression  as  to  prevent  the  latter 
from  penetrating  the  anonymous  disguise, — Washing 
ton,  writing  from  home  to  each  of  his  two  Cabinet 
advisers,  tried,  like  an  affectionate  parent,  to  compose 
the  strife.  The  reply  of  each  was  characteristic.  Jef 
ferson,  responding  from  Monticello,  poured  out  his 
wounded  feelings,  though  in  a  passionate  strain  un 
usual  with  him,  and  renewed  his  determination  to 
retire  the  next  4th  of  March,  to  which  day  he  looked 
forward,  as  he  said,  "  with  the  longing  of  a  wave-worn 
mariner."  Hamilton,  in  language  scarcely  more  tem 
perate,  reiterated  his  charge  that  Jefferson  had  been 
a  uniform  opponent  ever  since  his  first  entrance  into 
the  Cabinet,  and  that  under  his  auspices  a  party  had 
been  formed  in  the  legislature  for  subverting  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  Jefferson  promised,  out 
of  regard  to  the  President's  feelings,  to  abstain  from 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE.  169 

open  controversy  until  his  retirement,  after  which  he 
would  appeal  to  the  country  should  his  own  justifica 
tion  require  it ;  but  Hamilton,  though  filial  in  his  ex 
pressions,  declined  for  the  present  to  recede  from  the 
course  which  he  had  already  deliberately  undertaken. 

This  correspondence,  which  is  preserved  among 
the  printed  works  of  the  three  distinguished  men, 
brought  the  Cabinet  contest  to  its  climax.  But  soon 
after  the  unanimous  re-election  of  Washington  to  the 
Presidency  the  drift  of  events  changed,  and  a  new 
impulse  to  national  parties  in  America  was  given  by 
the  dethronement  and  execution  of  Louis  XVI.,  and 
the  war  which  the  new  republic  of  France  declared 
against  Great  Britain.  The  line  of  political  cleavage 
ran  substantially  as  before ;  but  instead  of  Hamilton's 
financial  plans,  the  progress  of  the  French  Revolution 
now  absorbed  our  people's  attention,  and  men  took 
sides,  for  many  years,  as  their  sympathies  inclined  to 
their  former  ally  or  the  mother  country  in  the  por 
tentous  and  absorbing  struggle  which  for  the  next 
twenty  years  convulsed  all  Europe.  These  two  con 
tending  champions  among  foreign  powers  sought 
constantly  to  embroil  the  United  States,  each  on  her 
own  side  ;  and  though  neutrality  was  soon  discovered 
to  be  the  true  policy  of  this  Union,  and  neutral  com 
merce  our  rich  reward,  nothing,  as  the  course  of 
events  compelled,  could  ever  prevail  on  this  side 
of  the  ocean,  in  a  genuine  sense,  until  the  War  of 
1812  and  the  final  downfall  of  Napoleon  gave  us  full 


170  THOMAS   JEFFERSON. 

independence  of  European  politics,  and  completed 
America's  final  divorcement  from  the  government 
systems  of  the  Old  World. 

The  first  months  of  1793  raised  the  enthusiasm  of 
our  susceptible  people  to  an  extravagant  pitch,  when 
the  news  crossed  the  ocean  that  France  had  estab 
lished  a  republic  of  free  consent,  like  ours,  whose 
armies  went  forth  triumphant  against  the  crowned 
monarchs  of  Europe.  These  were  the  days  of  civic 
feasts  in  Boston  and  other  cities,  of  oxen  roasted 
whole  and  cakes  stamped  "  Liberty  and  Equality,"  of 
jail  deliveries,  and  those  brotherhood  gatherings  where 
the  French  and  American  flags  were  intertwined  as 
emblems  of  perpetual  alliance.  But  the  sickening 
intelligence  that  the  gentle  king,  with  his  consort 
Marie  Antoinette,  had  been  beheaded,  set  the  sober 
among  our  citizens  reflecting. 

Washington  had  been  a  second  time  inaugurated, 
and  the  critical  foreign  situation  kept  Jefferson  at  his 
portfolio,  by  his  chiefs  request,  a  little  longer.  Early 
in  April,  and  while  the  President  was  once  more  at 
Mount  Vernon,  the  startling  news  reached  Phila 
delphia  that  France  had  audaciously  added  Great 
Britain  to  her  list  of  belligerents.  Repairing  imme 
diately  to  Philadelphia,  Washington  at  once  consulted 
his  Cabinet  as  to  what  course  should  be  pursued.  A 
new  minister,  accredited  from  the  French  Republic, 
was  already  on  his  way :  it  was  agreed  unanimously 
that  he  ought  to  be  received.  Furthermore  our 
administration  determined  that  a  proclamation  of 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE.  171 

neutrality  should  issue  as  between  Great  Britain  and 
France.  Jefferson  would  have  convened  Congress  in 
extra  session ;  but  in  this  respect  he  was  overruled, 
doubtless  because  the  popular  delirium,  which  favoured 
France  unduly  at  this  crisis,  was  too  embarrassing  for 
calm  conduct  in  affairs  to  risk  a  corresponding  infec 
tion  in  the  legislature. 

In  the  fierce  and  protracted  struggle  which  ensued 
abroad,  —  complicated,  as  the  years  rolled  on,  by  the 
dazzling  but  deceitful  ambition  of  the  Great  Napoleon, 
—  Great  Britain  and  France  began  with  unequal 
claims  upon  American  consideration.  The  former 
power,  sour  and  unaccommodating  ever  since  these 
colonies  were  irrecoverably  lost,  had  entered  into 
no  commercial  relations  with  her  former  subjects. 
France,  on  the  other  hand,  had  bound  the  United 
States  so  closely  by  the  treaties  of  1778,  which 
made  her  our  warlike  ally  in  the  Revolution,  that,  to 
take  their  literal  phrase,  we  seemed  forever  obligated 
in  return  to  make  common  cause  with  her  against  her 
future  enemies.  Jefferson  was  for  ridding  our  alliance 
of  so  disastrous  an  implication,  at  the  same  time  pre 
ferring  France  to  her  adversary  in  neutral  accommo 
dations,  while  the  present  unequal  condition  of  foreign 
relations  continued.  Hamilton,  on  the  other  hand, 
became  the  zealous  advocate  of  British  interests ;  on 
him  leaned  the  British  sympathizers  among  our  peo 
ple,  merchants  engaged  in  the  British  trade,  all  who 
looked  upon  French  democracy  and  French  liberalism 
with  abhorrence.  He,  in  the  Cabinet,  riddled  the 


l?2  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

legalities  of  these  French  treaties,  as  only  an  astute 
lawyer  is  capable  of  doing.  President  Washington 
was  compelled,  tacitly  at  least,  to  concede  their  pres 
ent  existence ;  and  it  became  a  cardinal  object  of 
American  policy  during  the  next  eight  years  to  pro 
cure  a  fair  commercial  treaty  from  Great  Britain ;  and 
more  than  this,  in  view  of  the  bloody  and  desperate 
strife  that  reddened  the  Old  World's  horizon,  to 
readjust  our  relations  with  France  besides,  so  as 
to  maintain  cordiality  and  commerce,  but  no  more. 
Gratitude  for  succour  in  the  past  was  so  heartily 
fostered  by  our  people  that  the  folly,  the  violence, 
the  tyrannous  development  of  the  French  Revolution 
could  not  utterly  quench  it ;  yet  American  interest 
was  plainly  to  avoid  European  complications  and 
wars  of  ambition,  and  preserve  a  fair  and  honourable 
neutrality.  Washington's  formulation  of  such  a  policy 
in  his  Farewell  Address  was  the  fruit  of  the  responsible 
experience  which  his  administration  now  entered  upon. 

Jefferson  did  not  remain  long  enough  in  the  Cabi 
net  to  help  compass  the  most  difficult  points  of  our 
present  foreign  diplomacy.  But  the  next  few  months 
were  amply  occupied  by  his  department  in  smoothing 
out  the  perplexities  in  which  our  revolutionary  treaties 
with  France  involved  us,  so  as  to  baffle  the  aggressive 
and  superserviceable  zeal  of  the  first  minister  from 
the  French  Republic.  Minister  or  "  Citizen  "  Genet, 
who  landed  at  Charleston  on  the  8th  of  April  from 
a  French  frigate,  brought  with  him  blank  army  and 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE.  173 

navy  commissions  and  letters  of  marque ;  and  his 
whole  pompous  tour  of  the  United  States,  from  the 
fitting  out  of  privateers  under  the  French  flag  imme 
diately  upon  his  arrival  and  before  he  had  brought  his 
credentials  to  the  seat  of  government,  to  his  sending 
out  the  "  Little  Democrat"  to  sea  from  Philadelphia, 
in  defiance  of  Washington's  proclamation,  and  with  a 
passionate  threat  to  appeal  from  the  President  to  the 
people,  was  a  constant  trial  to  executive  forbearance. 
Jefferson's  patience  with  him,  though  greater  than 
that  of  his  colleagues,  could  not  bear  such  a  strain ; 
and  with  the  concurrence  of  the  whole  Cabinet,  Wash 
ington  after  four  months'  endurance  requested  the 
recall  of  this  meddlesome  minister,  who  had  tried  by 
the  force  of  his  own  lever  upon  public  opinion  to 
force  America  into  war  on  the  side  of  France  against 
the  wishes  of  our  Executive.  Genet  was  superseded 
by  his  own  government  with  a  polite  disavowal  of  his 
conduct ;  and  America,  in  her  efforts  to  preserve  neu 
trality,  gained  the  chance,  at  least,  of  decent  self- 
respect. 

At  the  end  of  this  trying  year  1793  Jefferson  retired 
from  office,  having  repeatedly  postponed  his  intention 
at  Washington's  urgent  request.  A  new  Congress  had 
by  this  time  met  and  organized  at  Philadelphia,  and 
his  diplomatic  correspondence  as  transmitted  to  that 
body  elicited  the  spontaneous  tribute  of  all  parties, 
for  in  it  he  had  upheld  with  dignity  the  chosen  policy 
of  neutrality  with  neither  timidity  nor  needless  irri 
tation.  He  had  not,  as  many  of  his  adversaries 


174  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

imagined,  catered  to  the  follies  of  the  ultra- French 
partisans,  though  Genet  had  tartly  insinuated  in  his 
letters  that  the  Secretary  was  one  whose  intercourse 
revealed  "  an  official  language  and  a  language  confi 
dential  ;  "  at  the  same  time  that  the  sympathetic  tone 
of  his  despatches  with  French  popular  efforts  for  self- 
government  was  sufficiently  traceable  to  keep  him  in 
admirable  tone  with  American  sentiment,  which  at 
that  time  resented  the  harsh  and  exasperating  tem 
per  of  English  diplomacy  through  the  whole  trying 
episode.  As  a  last  official  document,  Jefferson  further 
transmitted  to  Congress  a  report  on  American  com 
merce  which  he  had  prepared  in  compliance  with  a 
legislative  order.  This  paper,  alike  free  from  pas 
sionate  and  disfiguring  comments,  supplied  valuable 
statistics  of  American  trade,  reciting  both  the  restric 
tions  and  advantages  to  which  it  was  at  this  time 
subjected.  Free  commerce  he  here  considered  the 
ideal  commerce  for  the  United  States,  could  but  a 
single  nation  assent  to  such  mutual  relations ;  but 
when  nations  refuse  a  liberal  reciprocity,  counter  reg 
ulations  become  necessary.  "  It  is  not,"  observes 
this  report,  "  to  the  moderation  and  justice  of  others 
we  are  to  trust  for  fair  and  equal  access  to  market 
with  our  productions,  or  for  our  due  share  in  the 
transportation  of  them,  but  to  our  own  means  of  in 
dependence  and  the  firm  will  to  use  them." 

Jefferson  received   from  President  Washington,  on 
retiring,  a  touching  and  affectionate  tribute    to   his 


SECRETARY  OF  STATE,  175 

integrity  and  talents;  but  he  never  again  placed 
himself  in  the  attitude  of  counsellor  to  a  Federalist 
administration.  The  inevitable  drift  of  our  politics 
was  to  new  dissensions  founded  upon  the  irrecon 
cilable  views  which  Hamilton  and  Jefferson  so  well 
represented  ;  and  Washington's  consummate  influence 
was  exerted  in  vain,  for  the  few  remaining  years  of 
his  life,  to  keep  the  intelligent  party  under  whose 
auspices  the  constitutional  Union  had  been  ushered 
in  co-existent  with  the  new  government.  Jefferson's 
sympathies  were  unreservedly  with  the  opposition,  — 
with  those  who  yearned  for  a  broader  democracy. 
The  longer  he  had  continued  under  the  present  ad 
ministration  the  more  profound  had  been  his  disgust, 
liable  as  was  his  official  stand  to  constant  misconcep 
tion.  Scarcely  a  phase  of  financial  policy,  after  Ham 
ilton  had  first  proposed  his  National  Bank,  scarcely 
a  phase  of  the  belligerent  troubles  in  the  present 
European  war,  but  had  found  him  advocating  one 
course  of  action,  and  Hamilton  another.  There  were 
but  four  constitutional  advisers  who  formed  originally 
the  so-called  Cabinet ;  and  while  of  that  number 
Hamilton  found  always  a  firm  supporter  in  Knox,  the 
Secretary  of  War,  Jefferson  could  count  little  upon 
so  slippery  a  second  as  Randolph,  the  Attorney- 
General,  who  betrayed  already  something  of  that 
unsteadiness  of  principle  which  brought  him  into 
disgrace  soon  after  he  had  succeeded  to  the  vacant 
portfolio  of  State.  Between  the  two  real  advisers, 
habitually  pitted  against  each  other  like  fighting- 


176  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

cocks,  the  grave  President  had  given  the  preponder 
ance  of  his  preference  at  each  important  consultation. 
Hamilton's  resignation,  which  Washington  held  at  the 
time  of  his  adversary's  departure  for  a  later  accept 
ance,  was  attended  with  very  different  consequences ; 
that  Secretary  took  good  care  that  the  remodelling  of 
the  Cabinet  should  elevate  his  own  friends  and  de 
pendents  ;  and  to  a  remarkable  degree  for  one  whose 
immediate  fellow-citizens  gave  him  no  support  as  a 
constituency,  he  instigated  and  even  directed  the 
inner  councils  of  his  party  as  long  as  a  Federalist 
administration  was  left  in  power. 


PARTY  LEADER  AND  VICE-PRESIDENT.     177 
CHAPTER   XL 

PARTY   LEADER   AND   VICE-PRESIDENT. 
1794-1801. 

THE  political  party  which  Jefferson  founded  was 
styled  by  him  "Republican,"  and  to  that  name  he 
constantly  adhered;  for  though  he  favoured  zeal 
ously  the  modern  French  philosophy  of  liberty, 
equality,  and  fraternity  for  all  mankind,  he  had  the 
penetration  to  discern  that  neither  France  nor  the 
American  Republic  was  yet  ripe  for  the  experiment  of 
pure  sovereignty  in  the  common  people.  He  mis 
trusted  that  France  herself  was  already  in  danger  of 
losing  the  safe  moorings  of  sagacity.  He  had  promptly 
warned  his  friends  that  Genet  must  be  abandoned ; 
and  even  in  the  first  flush  of  French  enthusiasm,  he 
would  not  lend  his  sanction  to  the  new  party  style  of 
"  Democrat ;  "  nor  to  those  Democratic  clubs  which 
flourished  in  America's  chief  cities  for  a  short  time, 
after  the  model  of  the  French  Jacobin  societies,  with 
revolutionary  methods  and  a  fatal  tendency  to  violence 
and  misrule.  In  France  the  downfall  of  Robespierre 
presently,  with  his  wholesale  executions  and  bloody 
despotism,  involved  the  final  ruin  of  the  Jacobin 
clubs ;  while  in  our  own  country  the  Democratic  clubs, 
those  feeble  imitators,  sank  in  1 794  under  the  political 
odium  of  the  whiskey  insurrection  of  Western  Penn- 


12 


178  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

sylvania,  which  they  had  abetted,  and  the  stigma  of 
"  self-created  societies  "  affixed  by  Washington's  mes 
sage  that  year  to  Congress,  —  an  epithet,  we  may  add, 
which  in  its  general  application  showed  so  imperfect 
an  apprehension  of  the  true  basis  on  which  all  popular 
parties  in  a  Republic  like  ours  must  eventually  rest, 
that  Jefferson  would  not  suffer  it  to  pass  unchallengeol. 
Jefferson  had  retired  from  the  Cabinet  immensely 
popular,  and  yet  for  the  time  disgusted  with  public 
station.  On  the  i6th  of  January,  1794,  he  reached 
his  beloved  Monticello,  and  took  up  once  more  the 
renovation  of  his  estate.  He  was  now  about  fifty 
years  old,  resuming  domestic  cares  not  as  a  husband 
but  as  a  grandfather;  his  sandy  hair  had  begun  to 
show  the  fkst  hoar-frost  of  age  ;  and  in  the  prostrating 
reaction  which  followed  at  once  so  long  a  space  of 
public  business  and  excitement,  he  fancied  himself 
growing  old,  and  his  strong  constitution  already  shat 
tered.  But  this  was  only  a  brief  fancy.  Temperance 
kept  him  robust  for  many  years  to  come,  nor  could 
his  elastic  spirits  long  desert  him.  His  daughters 
and  grandchildren  came  to  enliven  his  household  with 
their  bright  presence  ;  and  after  a  considerable  chasm 
in  his  private  correspondence,  during  which  letters 
would  accumulate  unacknowledged,  while  his  own 
unfrequent  epistles  to  Washington,  to  Adams,  or  to 
Randolph,  his  successor  at  the  State  Department, 
would  describe  himself  as  rotating  crops,  contemplat 
ing  the  tranquil  growth  of  his  lucerne  and  potatoes,  and 
thoroughly  weaned  from  public  affairs,  we  see  his  in- 


PA R  TY  LEADER  AND  VICE-PRESIDENT.     I  7  9 

terest  in  public  events  gradually  reviving  in  a  trenchant 
though  desultory  criticism  upon  the  course  of  federal 
administration  when  he  wrote  to  his  party  friends. 
He  may  have  given  political  counsel  to  Madison  and 
other  friends  during  these  intervening  months;  but 
if  so,  it  was  oral  and  when  visited  during  the  recess 
of  Congress. 

These  were  ill  times  for  continuing  an  administration 
upon  that  lofty  plane  of  unpartisanship  which  Washing 
ton  had  proposed  at  the  outset  of  his  presidency, 
—  seeking  out  for  his  administration  distinguished 
men  from  all  quarters  of  the  Union,  with  differing 
views,  which  his  own  ascendancy  might  keep  in  equi 
librium.  Except  for  Monroe,  who  soon  repented  his 
willingness,  no  more  leaders  of  Jefferson's  political 
tenets  would  take  responsible  office  under  the  present 
administration ;  and  distinguished  independents,  like 
Patrick  Henry,  who  had  held  aloof  ever  since  our 
Constitution  was  adopted,  were  pursued  with  appoint 
ments  in  vain.  John  Adams  used  to  say  that  the  refusal 
of  prominent  men  to  serve  in  Washington's  Cabinet 
after  its  first  organization  was  broken  up,  arose  from 
their  disinclination  to  encounter  the  arrogance  and 
influence  of  Hamilton.  Hamilton,  himself  retiring  at 
the  close  of  the  present  year,  swayed  the  incon 
spicuous  men  upon  whom  the  President  had  hence 
forth  to  depend  with  unabated  vigour,  and  continued 
to  dictate  most  of  the  policy  of  the  Federalists  so  long 
as  they  dominated  in  the  Union,  —  nothing,  indeed, 


180  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

but  the  pertinacious  dislike  of  John  Adams,  Washing 
ton's  successor  in  the  supreme  magistracy,  serving  after 
Jefferson's  retirement  to  baffle  and  disconcert  him. 

"  From  the  moment  of  my  retiring  from  the  admin 
istration,"  states  Jefferson,  when  reviewing  this  period 
in  the  preface  to  his  "  Anas,"  "  the  Federalists  got 
unchecked  hold  of  General  Washington.  His  memory 
was  already  sensibly  impaired  by  age  ;  the  firm  tone  of 
mind  for  which  he  had  been  remarkable  was  begin 
ning  to  relax,  its  energy  was  abated ;  a  listlessness  for 
labour,  a  desire  for  tranquillity  had  crept  on  him,  and 
a  willingness  to  let  others  act  and  even  think  for  him. 
Like  the  rest  of  mankind,  he  was  disgusted  with  the 
atrocities  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  was  not  suffi 
ciently  aware  of  the  difference  between  the  rabble  who 
were  used  as  instruments  of  their  perpetration  and 
the  steady  and  rational  character  of  the  American 
people,  in  which  he  had  not  sufficient  confidence." 

At  the  present  stage  of  our  American  development, 
when  men  ambitious  of  political  office  not  only  lay 
wires  for  their  nomination,  but  boldly  announce  their 
purpose  to  besiege  the  citadel  of  preferment,  it  is  not 
strange  if  voters  feel  sceptical  when  avowals  of  a 
wish  for  retirement  come  from  the  lips  of  those  who 
forsake  public  station  at  the  height  of  their  renown 
and  popularity.  But  such  avowals  have  been  made 
sincerely ;  and  many  a  man  of  noble  ambition,  whose 
means  assure  him  of  a  livelihood,  has  turned  his  back 
upon  politics,  that  fickle  and  exacting  mistress,  with 
joy  to  escape  her  teasing  thraldom.  Popular  solicita- 


PARTY  LEADER  AND  VICE-PRESIDENT.     181 

tation  convincing  him  that  he  is  missed,  the  urgent 
counsel  of  friends  most  dear  to  him,  may  send  him 
back  to  the  battle  after  a  short  respite ;  but,  for  the 
time  being,  disinclination  is  stronger  than  either  the 
hope  of  public  fame  or  the  sense  of  public  duty. 
Such  had  been  Jefferson's  feelings  once  before,  and 
such  were  now  his  feelings  again.  The  misconcep 
tions  of  high  station,  environments  which  he  had  been 
powerless  to  control,  disheartened  and  mortified  him. 
That  the  attractions  of  the  federal  administration  did 
not  yet  dazzle  the  minds  of  American  patriots  whose 
passions  and  affections  had  first  centred  in  the  colony 
or  State,  this  earlier  era  supplies  repeated  instances. 
Jefferson  had  left  the  Continental  Congress  in  1776, 
when  his  fame  was  brilliant,  to  make  himself  useful  in 
State  legislation;  the  ermine  of  the  most  permanent 
dignity  which  the  new  Constitution  had  to  offer  could 
be  cast  aside  by  Jay  and  an  early  successor  when 
diplomacy  invited  to  fresh  achievements  abroad ;  and 
of  these  two,  the  former  resigned  forever  the  life 
incumbency  of  the  Chief  Justiceship  for  the  precarious 
honour  of  Governor  in  his  own  State  of  New  York. 

The  cardinal  points  of  Washington's  public  policy 
after  Jefferson's  retirement  from  the  Cabinet  which 
gave  rise  to  controversy,  embraced  Jay's  treaty  with 
Great  Britain,  and  Monroe's  unfortunate  mission  to 
France  which  ended  in  his  recall.  Jefferson  took  his 
humiliated  friend  and  fellow-citizen  into  his  political 
protection ;  and  the  bitter  opposition  which  Jefferson's 


182  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

Republican  friends  made  meanwhile  to  the  British 
treaty,  together  with  the  virulence  of  the  party  press 
on  both  sides,  and  the  zealous  support  of  the  Federal 
ists  in  that  unpopular  measure,  made  Washington  at 
length  their  own,  so  far  as  party  spirit  could  have 
found  any  possible  lodgment  in  a  breast  whose  deepest 
beat  was  for  the  common  good. 

All  political  opposition  to  the  conqueror  of  Amer 
ican  liberties,  or  to  the  measures  upon  which  he  had 
once  set  his  deliberate  sanction,  was  in  vain ;  and  a 
few  months  before  the  presidential  election  of  1 796, 
which  was  to  determine  the  choice  of  Washington's 
official  successor, — and  this  partly,  as  Jefferson  has 
claimed,  through  the  malice  and  falsehoods  of  a 
Virginian  neighbour,  —  a  great  point  was  gained  for 
popular  effect  by  the  political  party  which  throve  upon 
the  idolatries  of  the  age,  in  the  virtual  alienation  of 
Washington  from  one  whose  friendship  and  admira 
tion  had  constantly  attended  his  earlier  prime.  The 
alienation  was  natural  enough ;  for  to  Washington's  pure 
mind  a  public  action  he  had  once  performed  appeared 
so  sacred  and  so  conscientiously  entered  upon  that 
the  breath  of  censure  upon  it  seemed  the  taint  of  a 
personal  disloyalty.  No  decided  rupture  occurred  be 
tween  these  great  Virginians  ;  the  two  met  courteously 
in  public  at  Adams's  next  inauguration ;  but  their  cor 
respondence  and  private  intercourse  ceased,  and  a 
letter  written  by  Jefferson  in  1796  to  Mazzei,  an 
Italian  revolutionist,  and  published  a  year  later,  which 
made  allusion  to  the  shorn  "  Samsons  in  the  field," 


PARTY  LEADER  AND  VICE-PRESIDENT.     183 

was  held  up  by  the  Federalists  to  popular  execration 
long  after  Washington's  death,  as  a  sacrilegious  affront 
to  Washington's  unapproachable  person.  Jefferson 
always  disclaimed  the  intention  of  such  an  application ; 
and  the  common  voters,  at  least,  refused  to  censure 
him. 

That  Jefferson  did  not  enter  into  the  rhapsodies  of 
his  times  which  magnified  the  first  President  into  a 
demigod  infallible,  is  very  certain ;  and  that,  sincerely 
or  insincerely,  he  had  written  from  his  distant  retreat 
to  private  friends  in  Congress  with  less  veneration 
for  Washington's  good  judgment  on  some  points  of 
policy  than  for  his  personal  virtues  and  honesty,  is 
susceptible  of  proof  by  more  positive  testimony  than 
the  once  celebrated  Mazzei  letter.  Yet  we  should  do 
Jefferson  the  justice  to  add  that  political  differences  of 
opinion  never  blinded  him  to  the  transcendent  qualities 
of  Washington's  character,  which  he  had  known  long 
and  intimately  enough  to  appreciate  with  its  possible 
limitations,  which  is  the  best  appreciation  of  all.  Of 
many  contemporary  tributes  which  were  evoked  at  the 
close  of  the  last  century  by  that  great  hero's  death, 
none  bears  reading  so  well  in  the  light  of  another 
hundred  years  as  that  which  Jefferson  penned  mod 
estly  in  his  private  correspondence. 

What  obituary  notice  had  Hamilton's  fertile  pen  to 
prepare  for  the  last  commemoration  of  the  man  "  first 
in  peace,  first  in  war/'  his  constant  benefactor,  to 
whose  patient  and  paternal  solicitude  he  owed  every 
great  opportunity  of  his  life  ?  Some  eloquent  enco- 


1 84  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

mium,  perhaps,  more  emotional  even  if  less  discrimi 
nating  than  that  of  his  political  rival.  Alas  !  noth 
ing,  so  far  as  his  voluminous  writings  make  posterity 
aware,  beyond  the  confession  of  sublime  egotism, 
at  a  despondent  moment,  that  in  Washington  he  had 
lost  "  an  aegis  essential "  to  him. 

In  the  presidential  contest  of  1796  Jefferson  was 
chosen  Vice-President ;  John  Adams,  as  the  candidate 
of  the  Federalists,  prevailing  over  him  for  President 
by  a  very  close  vote  in  the  electoral  college.  The 
framers  of  our  Constitution  so  wise  in  what  they 
constructed  with  models  to  guide  them,  miscalcu 
lated  utterly  when  they  agreed  upon  an  expedient 
for  choosing  the  chief  executive  which,  as  they 
thought,  would  remit  political  parties  and  the  people 
themselves  to  the  background.  To  say  nothing  of 
that  false  filtration  of  popular  preferences  through  the 
medium  of  electoral  colleges  chosen  for  the  sole  pur 
pose  of  casting  a  vote  which  was  sure  to  be  predeter 
mined,  the  original  plan  of  our  Constitution  utterly 
ignored  the  inevitable  tendency  of  voters  under  a 
popular  government  to  select  both  a  President  and 
Vice-President  of  the  same  political  faith.  Two 
persons  were  to  be  voted  for,  by  the  electors  of  the 
respective  States;  the  person  proving  to  have  the 
greatest  number  of  votes,  if  a  majority,  was  to  be 
President,  and  the  next  highest  candidate,  Vice- 
President.  The  colleges  could  not  designate  any  one 
for  the  second  office.  That  scheme  was  badly  strained 


PARTY  LEADER  AND   VICE-PRESIDENT.     185 

in  this  first  real  contention  of  national  parties  in 
1796  for  the  Presidency;  and  in  the  second  struggle, 
as  we  shall  see,  four  years  later,  it  was  shattered  to 
pieces.  On  this  occasion,  then,  the  candidate  of  the 
Federalists  for  the  first  office  was  chosen  President, 
while  his  rival  of  the  Republican  party  became  neces 
sarily  the  Vice-President. 

There  had  not  been  much  love  lost  of  late  between 
Hamilton  and  John  Adams;  and  the  one  had 
wounded  the  pride  of  the  other  in  the  late  canvass  by 
trying  to  induce  Federalist  electors  to  give  the  two 
candidates  of  their  own  party  the  "double  chance," 
as  he  called  it,  of  coming  in  first.  Adams  was  saved 
by  the  constancy  of  his  New  England  friends,  who 
threw  away  upon  Pinckney,  the  second  candidate  ;  but 
even  thus  the  change  of  two  electoral  ballots  would 
have  reversed  the  offices  of  Adams  and  Jefferson  for 
the  next  four  years,  or  else  have  thrown  the  presidential 
contest  into  the  House. 

Jefferson,  who  had  professed  the  greatest  indiffer 
ence  for  public  office,  though  permitting,  of  course,  the 
use  of  his  name  by  party  friends,  was  prompt  to 
declare,  even  before  the  electoral  college  met,  that  he 
wished  his  friend  Adams  to  take  precedence  of  him. 
Nor  is  it  unlikely  that  he  hoped  to  detach  his  old 
revolutionary  ally  from  the  British  wing  of  the  Feder 
alists  by  stimulating  his  secret  resentment  against 
Hamilton.  Jefferson  knew  something  of  Adams's 
jealous  disposition,  and  had  quickly  detected  Ham 
ilton's  unfriendly  manoeuvre ;  and  while  always 


1 86  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

sincere  and  consistent  in  his  politics,  he  appears  to 
have  developed  in  his  new  post  of  Republican  leader 
something  more  than  the  simple  skill  and  tact  for 
organizing,  —  an  adroitness,  in  fact,  and  an  artful 
cajolery  such  as  justified  partly,  though  by  no  means 
to  the  fullest  extent,  the  reputation  he  now  gained 
rapidly  among  political  enemies  of  dissimulation. 
With  tranquil  good -humour  upon  the  electoral 
announcement,  he  felicitated  himself  on  his  escape 
from  the  first  honours ;  while  Federalists,  like  Fisher 
Ames,  who  deplored  the  folly  of  this  constitutional 
plan  which  placed  the  chief  of  a  rival  party  where  he 
would  incur  no  responsibility,  predicted,  with  clear 
sagacity,  that  President  and  Vice-President  would 
now  jostle  four  years  like  two  suns  in  the  meridian, 
and  then  the  Vice  would  be  first. 

John  Adams  himself  appears  to  have  entered  upon 
his  new  exalted  career  with  a  corresponding  disposi 
tion  to  conciliate  his  distinguished  friend  and  rival. 
It  was  perhaps  but  a  momentary  inclination ;  for 
Adams  was  a  man  of  impulse,  and  apt  to  strike  out  in 
his  own  independent  direction,  leaving  counsel  to 
follow.  The  situation  was  now  very  grave  with  France, 
and  an  extraordinary  commission  of  three  was  to 
be  sent  at  once  to  Paris  in  a  last  effort  to  propitiate. 
Adams,  before  asking  advice,  broached  his  plans 
very  freely  to  Jefferson ;  and  after  expressing  the  wish 
that  the  Vice-President  himself  might  serve  upon  this 
diplomatic  errand,  —  which  both,  however,  concluded 
very  quickly  would  be  unbecoming  an  officer  of  the 


PARTY  LEADER  AND  VICE-PRESIDENT.     187 

second  dignity,  —  he  asked  Jefferson  to  find  out 
whether  Madison  could  be  induced  to  become  one  of 
the  three  envoys.  Jefferson  consulted  Madison,  who 
declined,  as  he  himself  had  expected ;  and  as  for 
Adams  he  found  the  opposition  to  a  Republican 
appointment  so  strong  among  his  Cabinet  advisers, 
the  remnant  of  Washington's  administration,  that  he 
dropped  the  idea  of  his  own  accord,  and  met  Jefferson 
with  embarrassing  excuses  on  the  next  opportunity. 
From  that  time  forward,  the  Vice-President  was  never 
consulted  upon  the  plans  of  this  administration. 

Diplomatic  relations  with  France  made  the  great 
national  concern  of  the  next  four  years ;  and  while 
President  Adams,  by  force  of  the  broader  and  more 
generous  handling  he  applied  to  the  delicate  topic  than 
the  chief  advisers  of  his  party  would  have  permitted, 
gave  to  his  country  in  the  end  a  solid  and  honourable 
settlement,  the  abrupt  and  offensive  method  by  which 
he  accomplished  the  desirable  end  bred  schisms  in 
the  Federalist  ranks,  involving  the  political  ruin  of  the 
party  at  the  next  presidential  election,  together  with 
his  own.  Hamilton,  though  wiser  than  his  personal 
followers  of  British  sympathies  in  many  respects, 
anticipated  war  nevertheless  with  the  French  Republic 
from  the  very  first ;  and  when  he  found  the  American 
people  stirred  so  opportunely  to  enthusiastic  demon 
stration  against  the  bribes  and  insults  of  Talleyrand 
and  the  French  Directory,  military  ambition  infected 
his  ardent  imagination  so  strongly,  while  he  found 


1 88  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

himself  installed  the  virtual  commander-in-chief  of 
the  promised  struggle,  that  he  could  not  calmly 
weigh  or  approve  the  chances  for  pacific  negotia 
tions  which  Adams  presently  reopened  upon  his  own 
responsibility  when  Talleyrand  invited  them,  and  then 
pursued  to  a  successful  issue. 

Adams's  grave  error  at  the  outset,  in  a  crisis  like  the 
present,  was  in  accepting  Washington's  Cabinet  in  its 
full  integrity  for  his  own.  He  did  so,  not  upon  any 
intimation  from  Washington  that  the  latter  desired  it, 
but  in  deference  to  the  homage  of  the  age,  which 
seemed  to  regard  any  heritage  from  the  illustrious 
father  as  a  precious  one.  He  did  so,  we  may  rest 
assured,  not  cheerfully ;  for  he  more  than  once  repined 
privately  over  this  "  legacy  of  secretaries ;  "  but  the 
precedent  of  a  change  which  it  was  incumbent  upon 
him  to  set  for  the  first  time  he  postponed,  whether 
from  inattention  or  reluctance,  until  it  was  too  late  to 
save  his  administration  at  the  polls  in  1800.  A  more 
unsuitable  set  of  co-workers  under  such  a  President 
as  himself  could  not  well  be  conceived.  They  were 
second-rate  men,  promoted  to  high  influence  by 
Washington  originally,  because  the  other  men  he  most 
desired,  one  after  another,  refused ;  as  to  local  resi 
dence  they  were  badly  distributed;  they  had  very 
little  popular  or  political  following ;  and  the  majority, 
at  least,  had  been  taught  by  habit  and  early  depend 
ence  to  look  to  Hamilton  rather  than  Adams  for 
inspiration.  Pickering  and  Wolcott,  the  ablest  and 
most  conspicuous  of  these  counsellors,  opposed  Ham- 


PARTY  LEADER  AND  VICE-PRESIDENT.     189 

ilton  himself  inflexibly  when  it  came  to  a  prudent 
generosity  toward  Republican  opponents;  and  the 
former  of  these,  who  within  narrow  and  rocky 
confines,  as  it  were,  had  all  the  impetuousness  of  a 
mountain  torrent,  was  a  British  colonial  as  to  foreign 
prepossessions,  and  steeped  in  antipathy  to  France  and 
the  aims  of  the  French  Revolution.  A  war  on  Britain's 
side  with  the  French  Republic  and  French  philosophy 
he  would  have  welcomed  under  any  circumstances. 
In  short,  Adams's  Cabinet,  so  far  from  recognizing  their 
humbler  functions  as  his  subordinates,  acted  as  though 
they  had  been  specially  placed  in  authority,  as  vice 
gerents  of  the  first  great  President,  to  curb  and  confine 
what  they  chose  to  consider  the  erratic  tendencies  of 
a  successor ;  and  in  doing  so  they  gave  all  the  coun 
tenance  possible  to  Hamilton's  interference  in  the 
same  condescending  direction.  President  Adams, 
when  he  had  his  own  way,  forced  it  in  spite  of  them 
and  by  outflanking  counsel ;  whatever  might  be  termed 
conciliating  in  his  intercourse  with  his  Cabinet  con 
sisting  mainly  in  letting  men  go  their  own  way  far 
enough  in  the  lesser  matters  to  plot  and  meddle 
with  the  patronage,  thereby  bringing  his  administration 
into  deeper  popular  disgrace.  By  a  prodigious  effort 
Adams  reconstructed  his  Cabinet,  or  nearly  did  so, 
calling  liberal  leaders  of  the  party,  like  Marshall,  into 
the  administration ;  but  by  that  time  the  Federalist 
dissensions  had  wrought  irreparable  disaster ;  and  like 
his  distinguished  son  in  later  times,  this  President  led 
his  party  to  rout  and  ruin  when  a  candidate  for 


190  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

re-election,  —  a  splendid  statesman  when  bold  and 
independent  action  was  needful,  but  a  pronounced 
failure  as  a  popular  politician. 

Jefferson  presided  with  tranquil  grace  over  the 
dignified  Senate  Chamber,  whose  members  never 
exceeded  thirty-two  while  the  federal  abode  remained 
at  Philadelphia.  It  was  not  until  after  the  momentous 
elections  of  1800  that  Congress  first  assembled  on  the 
bank  of  the  Potomac.  On  the  i3th  of  October,  1797, 
and  during  the  interval  which  followed  the  adjourn 
ment  of  the  special  session  in  May,  Maria,  his  younger 
daughter,  was  married  at  home  to  her  half-cousin,  John 
Wayles  Eppes,  who  at  a  later  date  and  after  his 
father-in-law  became  President,  served  as  an  impor 
tant  member  of  the  House  of  Representatives.  With 
his  usual  systematic  attention  to  the  business  now 
engaging  him,  the  Vice-President  prepared  during 
these  four  years  of  irresponsible  incumbency  his 
famous  parliamentary  manual,  not  without  a  minute 
research  into  the  origin  and  customs  of  other  legisla 
tive  bodies  which  he  had  begun  in  a  commonplace 
book  while  a  student  of  law.  The  Federalists  were 
now  strong  enough  in  the  Senate  to  transact  the 
public  business  on  their  own  responsibility,  and  an 
opposition  Vice-President  was  not  called  upon  to  give 
his  casting  vote.  From  an  assembly  already  com 
manding  a  good  party  majority,  this  branch  of 
Congress  quickly  gave  the  Federalists,  under  the  imme 
diate  impulse  of  the  war  spirit  against  France,  a  good 


PARTY  LEADER  AND   VICE-PRESIDENT.     191 

two-thirds  control,  capable  of  rushing  the  most 
imprudent  and  despotic  measures  into  legislation; 
and  even  after  the  danger  of  a  war  was  over,  which 
the  French  Directory  with  all  their  gratuitous  insults 
had  never  dreamed  of  provoking,  the  change  of 
political  atmosphere  in  the  next  House  of  Represen 
tatives,  affected  very  little  the  character  or  disposition 
of  the  senatorial  majority,  which  still  persisted  in  doing 
Adams's  administration  all  the  mischief  possible  by  its 
firm,  arbitrary,  and  intolerant  procedure  utterly  in 
disregard  of  the  public  wishes.  But  all  this  time,  and 
while  preserving  his  imperturbable  demeanour,  Jeffer 
son  watched  with  keen  scrutiny  the  course  of  the 
public  business  about  him,  sending  facts  and  sugges 
tive  comments  to  the  presses  and  politicians  of  his  own 
party  faith,  and  guiding  incessantly  the  policy  of  the 
Republican  opposition  by  his  confidential  counsel. 

It  was  a  proud  moment  for  the  Federalist  adminis 
tration  when  in  the  spring  of  1798  the  despatches 
from  our  unsuccessful  envoys  in  France  revealed  the 
corrupt  insolence  of  Talleyrand  and  the  French 
Directory.  "  Millions  for  defence  "  was  the  American 
response,  "but  not  one  cent  for  tribute."  For  once 
in  his  life  was  the  old  revolutionary  sage  in  the  Presi 
dent's  chair  the  idol  of  the  people ;  the  familiar  An 
acreontic  music  was  set  to  the  new  verses  of  "  Adams 
and  Liberty  "  in  his  honour;  his  head  struck  the  stars 
in  earnest.  But  in  the  always  trying  moment  of 
unbounded  enthusiasm,  the  Federalists  in  Congress 


192  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

pressed  too  far  the  favouring  opportunity  to  place 
rigorous  bonds  upon  their  downcast  political  oppo 
nents  ;  and  John  Adams  in  his  own  mental  exaltation 
set  his  sign  manual  to  enactments  of  the  two  Houses 
which  had  rilled  even  Hamilton  with  momentary  dis 
may.  The  harsh  Naturalization  Act,  the  Alien  Act, 
and  the  Sedition  Act  —  all  embraced  and  proudly 
clung  to  by  the  pedagogues  of  current  politics  against 
every  symptom  of  popular  discontent  and  remon 
strance,  as  though  to  make  the  present  grasp  upon 
the  national  citadel  perpetually  their  own  —  have 
passed  into  history  as  the  fatuous  folly  of  a  party 
which  forgot  that  there  exists  a  Nemesis  in  public 
opinion. 

//  Jefferson/aided,  as  events  soon  proved,  by  the  dis 
persion  of  these  war-clouds  and  a  friendly  and  honour 
able  compact  which  was  finally  concluded  with  the 
French  Republic,  after  polite  apologies  had  taken  the 
sting  from  the  affront,  took  advantage  of  this  ill-judged 
experiment  upon  personal  liberty  and  free  speech  b^ 
formulating  a  startling  State  protest  against  the  Alien 
and  Sedition  laws.  The  plan  he  secretly  concerted 
with  Madison,  his  coadjutor,  in  the  recess ;  and  the 
latter  prepared  resolutions  which  passed  the  Virginia 
Legislature  about  the  close  of  the  year,  while  Jefferson 
with  his  own  pen  drafted  resolutions  of  a  still  bolder 
scope,  which  a  few  weeks  earlier  he  procured  a  friend 
to  introduce  in  the  Legislature  of  Kentucky,  and  which 
passed,  somewhat  softened  in  expression,  with  but  few 
dissenting  votes.  These  were  the  famous  Kentucky 


PARTY  LEADER  AND   VICE-PRESIDENT.     193 

and  Virginia  resolutions  l  upon  which  Calhoun  and 
his  Southern  disciples  in  a  later  generation,  and  with 
disunion  aims  in  view,  based  certain  dogmas  of  State 
sovereignty,  which  only  the  stronger  sword  of  the 
Union  has  dispelled,  at  terrible  cost,  in  the  bloody 
arbitrament,  still  remembered,  of  civil  war. 

Of  these  Kentucky  and  Virginia  resolutions,  once 
famous  in  political  discussion,  the  fairest  to  be  can 
didly  said  is  that  far  too  much  was  afterward  made  of 
them  when  Jefferson  was  in  his  grave.  The  Virginia 
resolutions  which  Madison  prepared  were  plainly 
within  the  scope  of  legislative  denunciation  by  a 
State,  in  pronouncing  the  Alien  and  Sedition  acts 
"palpable  and  alarming  infractions  of  the  Constitu 
tion,"  which  they  certainly  were.  And  as  for  those 
of  Kentucky,  had  John  Breckenridge,  who  introduced 
them,  been  their  actual  author,  instead  of  Jefferson, 
their  memory  would  scarcely  have  survived  the 
century  which  buried  the  brief  controversy  and  the 
cause  of  it.  It  was  because  Jefferson's  name  was 
found  long  after  to  honour  this  method  of  State  re 
monstrance,  that  the  Kentucky  and  Virginia  protests 
were  brought  at  length  from  their  dusty  archives  to  be 
forged  into  new  weapons,  not  for  nullifying  federal 
supremacy  alone,  but  for  rupturing  and  breaking  up 
the  whole  Union. 

It  is  true  that  in  those  early  days  of  constitutional  ' 
theorizing,  and  when  scarcely  a  principle  of  fundamental 

1  See  E.  D.  Warfield's  Kentucky  Resolutions ;  i  Schouler's 
United  States,  423. 

13 


194  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

law  had  yet  received  its  exposition,  judicially  or  other 
wise,  while  the  Constitution  itself  enumerated  without 
dogmatizing,  Jefferson  argued  in  a  strain  bolder  than 
either  of  his  colleagues  chose  at  the  time  to  approve. 

To  take  the  argument  at  its  utmost,  State  opposition 
to  unconstitutional  acts  has  not  been  confined  to 
instances,  like  those  of  1798,  where  personal  liberty 
is  at  jeopardy.  On  what  stronger  ground  stood  the 
"  personal  liberty  "  acts  of  the  Northern  generation 
before  the  war,  than  that  rights  of  the  individual, 
against  doubtful  constitutional  law  at  least,  shall  be 

^shielded  to  the  utmost  by  State  jurisdiction? (Jefferson, 
on  the  present  occasion,  did  not  preach  disunion, 
but  "decentralization^  He  meant  and  he  pursued  a 
political  resistance  for  political  effect.  He  ultimately 
gained  his  point ;  and  as  President  soon  afterward, 
and  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  he  sanctioned  the  broad 
supremacy  of  this  Union  within  its  legitimate  sphere 
of  action.  By  his  official  initiative  in  more  respects 
than  one,  he  gave  a  new  impulse  to  the  strengthening 
and  extension  of  national  empire.  Moreover,  we 
should  remember  that  in  these  days  of  the  founders 
the  Constitution  by  its  own  silence  left  open  many 
questions  of  construction,  on  which  men  might  well 
differ  in  argument,  which  only  time,  experience,  cus 
tom,  and  what  we  call  public  policy  could  eventually 
decide.  The  Supreme  Court  can  never  be  the  final 
arbiter  of  political  questions,  exclusive  of  the  other 
great  departments  of  government ;  and  the  Supreme 

,Court  had  as  yet  framed  no  exposition  of  its  own. 


PARTY  LEADER  AND  VICE-PRESIDENT.     195 

The  presidential  struggle  of  1800  was  an  exciting 
and  desperate  one.  The  vote  in  the  electoral  colleges 
showed  a  decisive  triumph  for  the  Republican  party 
and  its  candidates.  Adams  had  managed  to  hold 
his  own  with  the  Federalists,  against  the  intrigues  of 
his  personal  enemies ;  but  Jefferson  and  Burr,  the  two 
candidates  on  the  Republican  side,  had  the  majority 
of  electoral  votes.  And  now,  on  the  first  assembling 
of  our  Congress  in  the  new  capital  on  the  Potomac, 
the  defect  of  the  Constitution  was  made  palpable  in 
providing  that  electors  should  vote  for  two  candidates 
without  designating  which  of  them  should  be  preferred 
as  President.  Against  Adams  and  Pinckney,  their 
Federalist  opponents,  Jefferson  and  Burr  were  loyally 
supported  together  by  the  Republicans,  and  received 
an  equal  vote.  The  tie  between  them,  in  consequence, 
prevented  for  the  first  time  a  constitutional  choice 
of  President,  and  devolved  the  function  of  selection 
upon  a  House  controlled  by  the  political  opponents 
of  Jefferson  and  Burr  to  decide  between  them. 

To  the  thoroughgoing  Federalist  leaders,  public 
opinion  was  but  a  feather  in  the  presidential  scales ; 
and  the  scheme  gained  headway  in  Congress  that 
the  defeated  party  should  make  capital  from  their 
adversaries.  Many  of  the  Federalist  representatives 
were  not  indisposed  to  bring  in  the  junior  above  his 
chief,  either  upon  some  bargain  for  the  patronage, 
or  so,  at  least,  as  to  humiliate  their  leading  opponent, 
and  breed  dissensions  in  his  party  host.  Burr,  as  it 
happened,  was  selfish,  profligate,  a  politician  without 


196  THOMAS   JEFFERSON. 

firm  principles,  easily  dazzled  and  led  astray  by  his 
own  ambitious  delusions.  Hamilton,  as  a  fellow- 
citizen  of  New  York,  understood  him  thoroughly; 
and  but  for  his  earnest  remonstrance  with  his  party 
friends,  the  plot  might  have  been  consummated  :  for 
Burr  himself,  though  cautious  of  committing  himself, 
was  too  ready  to  take  the  Presidency  in  breach  of 
honour.  The  balloting  was  kept  up  for  a  week  by 
the  House,  in  February,  1801,  after  the  formal  elec 
toral  count,  at  which  Jefferson  himself  performed  the 
unwelcome  duty,  as  presiding  officer,  of  announcing 
that  there  had  been  no  choice.  It  was  not  easy  for 
either  Jefferson  or  Burr  to  win  over  the  majority  of  the 
Representatives,  voting  by  States.  Caucuses  of  either 
party  met  from  time  to  time ;  and  sick  members  were 
brought  into  the  Capitol  in  their  beds  to  keep  the 
vote  of  their  respective  State  delegations  under  con 
trol.  As  days  went  on,  the  chance  appeared  less  of 
electing  Burr  than  of  reaching  the  4th  of  March  with 
out  any  choice  at  all;  and  for  that  contingency, 
singularly  enough,  the  Constitution  had  made  no  pro 
vision  whatever.  On  the  day  when  this  Congress 
would  expire,  and  the  term  of  the  present  Executive 
as  well,  who  would  be  President  of  the  United  States 
by  a  legal  title  ?  For  the  Constitution,  as  it  then  stood, 
left  no  means  of  designating  the  new  Vice-President, 
except  as  the  second  on  the  list  of  candidates  after  a 
President  had  been  chosen  by  the  House  of  the  expir 
ing  Congress.  The  spectacle  of  approaching  disaster, 
to  end,  perchance,  in  a  new  constitutional  convention, 


PARTY  LEADER  AND   VICE-PRESIDENT.     197 

or  utter  dissolution  of  the  Union,  brought  to  their  senses 
the  men  who  had  cared  so  little  to  respect  the  people's 
intended  choice ;  for  while  deference  to  the  popular 
will  resolves  easily  such  dilemmas,  the  wish  to  perplex 
opponents  is  uppermost,  while  the  discarded  still  keep 
the  reins.  On  the  thirty- sixth  ballot  Jefferson  was 
chosen  by  the  votes  of  ten  States ;  and  Burr  became 
the  Vice- President,  accordingly,  by  constitutional 
operation. 

John  Adams,  in  the  last  stage  of  the  presidential 
contest,  offended  Jefferson  by  his  petulant  refusal  to 
frown  down  the  machinations  of  his  own  Congressional 
associates.  They  parted  in  anger;  and  the  breach 
widened  further  when  the  President  proceeded  to  fill 
all  the  offices  he  could  possibly  lay  hands  upon  for  the 
advantage  of  his  party.  At  midnight  of  March  3, 
Marshall,  the  federal  Secretary  of  State,  was  found 
with  his  clerks  making  out  commissions  by  candle 
light  ;  and  on  the  sunrise  of  March  4,  ex- President 
Adams  hastened  in  his  carriage  from  the  wooded 
Capital,  commencing  his  homeward  journey  to  Massa 
chusetts  on  a  day  and  at  an  hour  which  precluded 
the  decent  decorum  of  giving  his  attendance  at  the 
inaugural  ceremonies  of  his  whilom  friend  and  official 
successor.  Alone  of  all  later  Presidents,  his  son,  the 
second  Adams,  who  inherited  that  honest  bitterness 
of  temper,  though  less  irascible,  refused  his  presence 
at  the  induction  of  a  successful  opponent. 


I98  THOMAS  yEFFERSON. 

CHAPTER  XII. 

A   REPUBLICAN   PRESIDENT. 
1801-1809. 

IT  remains  open  to  historical  disputation  whether 
Thomas  Jefferson  came  mounted  after  his  usual  fash 
ion  to  attend  the  inaugural  ceremonies  of  the  4th  of 
March,  1801,  and  hitched  his  horse  to  the  palings 
before  entering  the  unfinished  Capitol,  or  whether 
he  went  over  on  foot  from  his  lodgings,  which  were 
not  distant,  dispensing  altogether  with  dignified  aids 
of  locomotion.  The  veracity  of  an  English  traveller 
and  contemporary  who  described  the  scene  in  his  book 
is  involved  in  the  dispute.  But  in  either  case  poster 
ity  is  taught  the  same  impressive  lesson  of  simplicity 
that  the  new  President  was  continually  fond  of  impart 
ing,  in  his  contempt  for  public  spectacles  ;  favoured  as 
he  doubtless  was,  on  this  first  occasion  of  the  kind  at 
the  Potomac's  bank,  by  the  rustic  and  primeval  aspect 
of  the  new  federal  city.  That  a  large  concourse  of 
Jefferson's  fellow-citizens  attended  him  to  the  Capitol, 
some  mounted  and  some  on  foot,  the  newspapers  of 
the  day  took  pains  to  relate. 

To  an  audience  small  by  comparison  with  those 
of  later  times,  the  spectators  being  gathered  in  the 
Senate-chamber  of  our  whitened  freestone  edifice, 
Jefferson  read  an  address,  which,  like  all  productions 


A   REPUBLICAN  PRESIDENT.  199 

of  the  kind,  was  prepared  for  the  great  concourse  of 
people  throughout  the  Union  who  waited  attentively 
to  see  it  in  print.  Friends  were  delighted  by  it,  and 
foes  reacted  from  their  prejudices. 

This  inaugural  speech  was  elevated  in  tone,  abun 
dant  in  captivating  phrases,  breathing  full  confidence 
in  this  novel  American  experiment,  but  modest,  never 
theless,  as  to  his  own  personal  merits.  Emphasizing 
his  earnest  conviction  that  the  strongest  of  all  govern 
ments  on  earth  must  be  that  of  a  people  capable  of 
self-rule,  he  appealed  at  the  same  time  for  unity  of 
political  action.  Minorities,  he  said,  ought  to  be  gen 
erously  respected.  "  Every  difference  of  opinion  is 
not  a  difference  of  principle.  We  have  called  by 
different  names  brethren  of  the  same  principle.  We 
are  all  Republicans,  —  we  are  Federalists.  If  there 
be  any  among  us  who  would  wish  to  dissolve  this 
Union  or  to  change  its  republican  form,  let  them 
stand  undisturbed  as  monuments  of  the  safety  with 
which  error  of  opinion  may  be  tolerated  where  reason 
is  left  free  to  combat  it." 

Federalist  leaders  whose  minds  were  still  set  upon 
the  necessity  of  ruling  the  common  mob  by  disci 
pline  and  repressing  their  innate  tendencies,  flattered 
themselves  for  the  moment  that  the  Republican  pilot, 
conscious  of  his  own  incapacity,  meant  to  recall  them 
to  the  helm.  But  Jefferson  meant  nothing  of  the  kind. 
His  design  was,  of  course,  to  harmonize  parties ;  but 
this  he  meant  to  accomplish,  not  by  reconciling  the 


200  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

party  chieftains  opposed  to  him,  but  by  drawing  per 
suasively  to  his  own  standard,  rather,  the  mass  of 
common  voters,  hitherto  distrustful,  who  in  their  own 
hearts  loved  liberty.  In  this  he  signally  succeeded  as 
the  quick  months  went  by  ;  for  by  the  time  that  he 
stood  for  a  second  presidential  term,  in  1804,  he 
carried  more  than  nine  tenths  of  the  electoral  vote  of 
the  entire  Union ;  and  within  ten  years  after  his  final 
retirement  from  office,  came  "the  era  of  good  feeling," 
when  all  parties  were  gathered  into  this  Republican 
fold,  and  the  American  people  became  the  confident 
masters  of  their  own  institutions,  as  Jefferson  meant 
they  should,  before  parties  reorganized  for  a  second 
stage  of  Democratic  endeavour. 

It  was  impossible  that  any  of  Jefferson's  appoint 
ments  to  office  from  among  his  own  party  followers 
could  be  acceptable  to  the  mortified  chieftains  of  the 
Federalist  faith.  Proud,  scholarly,  disdainful,  —  those 
of  New  York  and  the  East  more  especially,  —  these 
patricians  saw  no  harbinger  of  good  in  such  plebeian 
advancement.  They  had  looked  upon  public  office  as 
the  endowment  of  their  caste,  and  could  never  stoop 
to  solicit  it.  Like  Horace  in  his  ode,  they  prefaced 
their  appeals  for  public  favour  by  the  assertion,  "  I 
hate  the  vulgar  crowd,  and  keep  it  off."  Indeed  they 
had  just  forestalled  the  people's  President  in  the  exer 
cise  of  his  delayed  functions  by  crowding  all  the 
patronage  possible  into  the  brief  final  months  of  their 
discarded  rule,  straining  to  the  utmost  those  legal 


A   REPUBLICAN  PRESIDENT.  2OI 

opportunities  which  our  Constitution  still  unwisely 
permits. 

They  had  created  a  judicial  circuit  system,  wholly 
superfluous,  with  a  complete  outfit  of  judges,  clerks, 
and  marshals,  in  order  to  make  life  incumbencies  for 
their  party  friends;  and  President  Adams,  with  a 
genius  for  incurring  odium,  had  compliantly  filled 
every  national  office  within  the  Executive  reach  by 
new  appointments,  so  many  of  which  were  crowded 
for  confirmation  into  the  final  third  day  of  March 
that  when  midnight  arrived  and  John  Marshall,  the 
retiring  Secretary  of  State,  stopped  work,  he  left  his 
desk  strewn  with  commissions  still  waiting  to  be 
officially  countersigned.  The  official  terms  of  many 
thus  appointed  would  have  extended  beyond  the  four 
years  of  Jefferson's  Presidency.  It  is  the  weakest 
joint  of  our  whole  constitutional  armour  that  leaves  a 
discarded  Congress  and  a  discarded  Federal  Execu 
tive  to  carry  on  the  government  together  for  a  whole 
winter's  season  after  the  people  at  the  polls  have  pro 
nounced  for  an  entire  change.  States  at  the  present 
day,  and  the  parliamentary  governments  of  Europe, 
besides,  defer  to  the  public  will  more  promptly. 

The  situation  for  the  victorious  Republicans  upon 
Jefferson's  accession  was  a  novel  and  delicate  one. 
For  the  first  time  a  new  national  party  had  been  lifted 
into  power,  —  a  party  whose  members  had  for  the  four 
previous  years  of  strife  been  jealously  ostracized  and 
even  removed  from  office  because  of  their  politics. 
Jefferson  resented  deeply,  as  was  natural,  the  midnight 


202  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

appointments  which  his  personal  friend  and  predeces 
sor  had  made  in  outrageous  disregard  of  the  people's 
wishes.  Marshall's  incomplete  commissions  were 
treated  as  null ;  and  the  late  Secretary  of  State,  hav 
ing  now  slipped  on  the  robes  of  Chief  Justice,  asserted 
in  vain  that  the  vested  rights  of  officials  whose  parch 
ments  had  not  been  delivered  were  in  law  as  inviolable 
as  his  own.  When  a  new  Congress  convened  the  next 
winter,  with  a  working  Republican  majority  in  both 
branches,  the  Circuit  Court  Act  was  repealed.  Parti 
sanship  here  retaliated  upon  partisanship,  as  it  always 
will.  But  Jefferson  by  no  means  inclined  to  portioning 
out  the  offices  as  the  spoils  of  a  partisan  or  per 
sonal  triumph.  His  general  aim  was  in  the  executive 
patronage,  to  bring  about  a  situation  where  both  par 
ties  might  share  and  neither  of  them  monopolize  the 
public  places.  While  those  guilty  of  official  miscon 
duct  or  notoriously  inefficient  were  liable  accordingly 
to  removal,  —  and  those,  too,  whose  electioneering 
activity,  or  open,  persistent,  and  industrious  opposition 
to  Republican  principles  made  them  obnoxious,  —  he 
refused  to  disturb  good  men  who  differed  from  him 
only  in  political  belief  and  performed  their  functions 
diligently.  And  though  some  of  his  party  followers 
would  have  preferred  a  clean  sweep,  he  set  the  exam 
ple  of  genuine  forbearance.  Only  about  sixteen 
vacancies  were  made  during  the  first  fourteen  months 
of  his  administration,  after  which  time  there  were 
very  few  removals  at  all,  and  those  almost  entirely 
because  of  the  incumbent's  misconduct  or  perverse 


A   REPUBLICAN  PRESIDENT.  203 

opposition.  The  usual  government  tenure  in  these 
early  days  was  without  definite  limit  of  years. 

Political  adversaries  complained,  of  course,  when 
ever  the  axeJglLaXall . „  "  It  would  have  been  to  me 
a  circumstance  of  great  relief,"  was  Jefferson's  reply 
on  one  memorable  occasion,  "  had  I  found  a  moder 
ate  participation  of  office  in  the  hands  of  the  majority. 
I  would  gladly  have  left  it  to  time  and  accident  to 
raise  them  to  their  just  share.  But  their  total  exclu 
sion  calls  for  prompter  corrections.  I  shall  correct 
the  procedure ;  but  that  done,  return  with  joy  to 
that  state  of  things  when  the  only  questions  concern 
ing  a  candidate  shall  be,  '  Is  he  honest  ?  Is  he  capable  ? 
Is  he  faithful  to  the  Constitution?'  " 

One  should  further  observe  that  in  the  course  of 
his  administrative  reforms  Jefferson's  constant  effort 
was  to  reduce  the  executive  patronage,  not  to  increase 
it.  The  Circuit  Court  repeal  was  followed  by  no  new 
judicial  erertion  of  life  incumbents,  and  Federalism 
dominated  the  United  States  bench  for  many  years 
longer.  The  net  expenditure  of  the  Union  was 
reduced,  while  every  honest  obligation  was  provided 
for.  With  the  entire  abolition  of  the  excise  taxes, 
Jefferson  got  rid  of  a  multitude  of  petty  offices. 
His  economies  in  the  customs  and  in  the  war  and 
navy  estimates  tended  in  the  same  direction.  Such 
voluntary  surrender  of  executive  patronage  finds  no 
ready  parallel  in  our  history ;  for  dispensers  of  place, 
however  disposed  to  retrench  in  other  respects,  sel 
dom  retrench  the  offices.  Said  bitter  John  Randolph, 


204  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

no  encomiast  of  Jefferson,  many  years  later  :  "  He  was 
the  only  man  I  knew,  or  ever  heard  of,  who  really, 
truly,  and  honestly  not  only  said  nolo  episcopari, 
but  actually  refused  the  mitre." 

IV  y;, 

Jefferson  desired  success,  no  doubt,  but  he  sought 

/  it  by  sincere  efforts  to  tranquillize  the  country.    Those 

/  he  appointed  to  office  were  for  the  most  part  men  of 

:    capacity  and    character,  servants  of  the  public  who 

were  not  inferior   to  those  they  superseded,  except 

perhaps,  through  no  fault  of  their  own,  in  prestige. 

Idealists  such  as  Paine,  who  were  personally  unfit  for 

office,  he    honoured   in    other   ways.     He   pointedly 

refused  to  appoint  his  own  relatives  to  office ;    and 

his    discernment    was    shown    in    assigning    to    each 

responsible    place    the  man  whose   talent  or  special 

acquirement  adapted  him  for  it. 

Jefferson's  method  of  appointment  indicated  the 
gloved  hand,  —  steadiness  of  purpose  conjoined  with 
delicacy  in  management ;  a  combination  of  qualities 
which  always  goes  far  towards  securing  political 
success.  But  beyond  this  he  had  the  power,  in  a 
remarkable  degree,  of  inspiring  confidence,  and  of 
impressing  his  ideas  upon  those  with  whom  he  was 
brought  into  close  relations.  His  contrast  in  this 
respect  to  Adams,  and  even  to  Washington,  his  only 
predecessors  in  civil  administration,  was  notable.  No 
President  ever  kept  such  peace  in  his  official  house 
hold,  or  sat  so  peacefully  at  the  head  of  the  council 
board.  All  of  his  earliest  advisers  remained  long  in 


A   REPUBLICAN  PRESIDENT.  205 

place  :  Madison,  Gallatin,  and  Dearborn  through  the 
entire  administration  of  eight  years ;  Gallatin  and 
Granger  some  five  years  longer.  They  were  men  of 
liberal  and  cultivated  tastes,  sympathetic  with  the 
President  in  matters  outside  the  official  routine,  none 
of  them  drones  or  mere  rhetoricians.  The  two  most 
indispensable  offices  —  the  State  and  the  Treasury  — 
were  filled  by  men  of  conspicuous  statesmanship,  but 
without  rivalry ;  and  in  the  other  posts  sound  discre 
tion  and  industry  prevailed  :  each  felt  his  political 
dependence  upon  the  chief,  but  at  the  same  time  a 
perfect  security. 

"The  third  administration,  which  was  of  eight 
years,"  wrote  Jefferson  in  1811,  "presented  an 
example  of  harmony  in  a  Cabinet  of  six  persons,  to 
which,  perhaps,  history  has  furnished  no  parallel." 
This  harmony  was  owing,  in  no  slight  degree,  to  the 
rule  with  which  the  new  President  set  out,  of  making 
himself  a  central  point  for  the  different  branches  of 
the  Executive,  so  as  to  preserve  unity  of  object  and 
meet  the  due  responsibility  for  whatever  was  done. 
According  to  Jefferson's  plan  for  practical  administra 
tion,  the  ordinary  daily  business  was  to  be  transacted 
upon  consultation  between  the  President  and  the  head 
of  that  department  alone  to  which  it  belonged.  For 
measures  of  importance  or  difficulty,  consultation  with 
all  the  heads  of  departments  was  needful  \  and  for 
this  he  preferred  in  theory  to  take  their  opinions  sep 
arately,  in  conversation  or  in  writing,  thus  leaving  his 
own  action  free ;  but  he  practised  the  open  Cabinet 


206  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

method  of  his  predecessors  without  experiencing  any 
ill  results.  The  latter  is  now  the  confirmed  practice 
of  government,  though  the  word  "cabinet "  is  not  to 
be  found  in  the  Constitution.  "  Yet,"  said  Jefferson, 
who  held  firmly  to  the  idea  of  presidential  responsi 
bility,  "  this  does,  in  fact,  transform  the  Executive  into 
a  directory ;  and  I  hold  the  other  method  to  be  the 
more  constitutional." 

Jefferson's  disposition  to  escape  official  pomps  and 
meet  the  people  in  easier  intercourse  than  had  been 
customary,  appeared  not  at  the  inaugural  ceremonies 
alone,  but  continually  afterward.  Many  patricians 
of  the  Federalist  school  had  laid  great  stress  upon 
official  formalities  for  fostering  among  the  people 
that  spirit  of  loyalty  which  is  akin  to  reverence,  and 
requires  a  shrine.  But  Loyalty  had  lost  her  foothold 
on  this  continent,  and  henceforth  the  true  animating 
spirit  of  our  institutions  was  to  be  patriotism  and  the 
sympathetic  sense  of  a  common  brotherhood.  Jeffer 
son,  ushering  in  the  nineteenth  century  for  these 
United  States,  stripped  government  as  much  as  pos 
sible  of  the  false  tinsel  of  externals,  and  led  on  from 
idols  to  the  new  ideal  of  social  confidence  and  self- 
respect,  of  a  people  obeying  their  best  impulses,  and 
obeying  while  persuading  the  will  of  the  majority. 
Things  trivial  of  themselves  bent  to  this  new  standard 
of  political  philosophy.  First  of  all,  he  abolished 
levees  and  courtly  drawing-rooms,  nor  would  he  suffer 
society  at  the  federal  capital  to  inflict  such  entertain- 


A   REPUBLICAN  PRESIDENT.  207 

ments  upon  him  for  its  own  amusement.  Departing 
still  further  from  the  example  of  our  two  earlier  admin 
istrations,  he  refused  to  have  his  birthday  known  or 
celebrated.  On  two  days  of  the  year,  New  Year's 
and  the  Fourth  of  July,  the  doors  of  the  White  House 
were  kept  open;  and  the  former  occasion,  which 
proved  the  more  suitable  for  the  latitude  of  our  Poto 
mac  capital,  remained  ever  after  its  chief  festal  day. 
The  Republican  President  and  philosopher  lived  in 
one  corner  of  the  unfinished  executive  abode,  then 
known  as  the  "  Palace,"  plain  in  his  manners  and 
always  accessible  to  those  who  called.  His  salary  and 
personal  income  he  freely  spent.  He  gave  official 
dinners,  entertaining  public  characters  after  the  usual 
custom,  and  entertaining  them  handsomely;  but  he 
was  heedless  of  nice  questions  of  procedure  in  seating 
his  guests.  Jefferson's  contempt,  indeed,  of  courtly 
niceties  of  rank  and  etiquette  caused  some  trouble  in 
the  diplomatic  circle  which  surrounded  him ;  and  the 
new  British  minister,  in  particular,  whose  mind  was 
too  gross  to  take  Republican  humours  lightly,  dis 
played  deep  umbrage  because  the  President  received 
him  in  dressing-gown,  slippers,  and  yarn  stockings, 
when  he  went  with  gold  lace  and  dress-sword  to  make 
his  first  official  call.  For  Jefferson  by  this  advanced 
time  of  life  had  come  to  indulge  a  widower's  hab 
its  to  his  full  bent ;  in  dress  he  was  careless,  often 
slipshod,  like  one  engrossed  in  other  matters ;  he 
combined,  too,  the  fashions  of  an  old  and  new  era,  as 
might  meet  his  own  passing  fancy.  But  his  Virginian 


208  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

stock  and  good-breeding  were  proof  against  medi 
ocrity  ;  and  men  of  science,  scholarship,  and  general 
worth  and  intelligence  remained  his  most  genial 
companions.  He  aimed  at  all  times  to  set  the 
popular  fashion  by  his  own  delicate  consideration 
for  all  who  were  made  in  God's  image  and  sought 
self-improvement.  With  all  his  zeal  for  the  new  experi 
ment  of  human  freedom  and  equality  at  this  late  time 
of  life,  Jefferson  showed  habits,  tastes,  and  general 
methods  still  savouring  of  that  eighteenth  century 
conservatism  to  which  he  had  been  educated ;  for  the 
vigorous  vulgarity  of  the  Jackson  administration  in 
the  course  of  public  affairs  was  still  far  off.  In  short, 
Jefferson's  personification  was  that  of  a  President 
who  introduced  rather  than  embodied,  in  its  fulness, 
modern  America,  modern  politics,  and  our  modern 
Democracy. 

The  rustic  seclusion  as  yet  of  our  federal  capital, 
so  grandly  planned  but  so  meanly  endowed,  made  it 
much  the  easier  for  this  first  Republican  President  to 
indulge  his  simple  preferences ;  and  furthermore  the 
White  House  had  no  mistress.  When  Jefferson's  only 
children,  his  married  daughters,  now  visited  him,  he 
enjoyed  sitting  on  the  floor  and  playing  with  his 
grandchildren.  His  younger  daughter  died  during 
his  first  presidential  term.  Shunning  grand  tours 
and  processions  which  would  have  placed  him  on 
exhibition,  and  travelling  modestly  between  Washing 
ton  and  Monticello  during  the  recess  of  Congress, 
he  breathed  the  wholesome  atmosphere  of  home  and 


A   REPUBLICAN  PRESIDENT.  209 

old  friends,  while  his    fame  extended  far  and  wide 
without  him. 

Captivating  manners,  wide  information,  and  quick 
sympathy  with  human  nature  —  a  book  which  he 
fully  comprehended  —  must  have  assured  one  like 
Jefferson  against  contempt.  Though  free  with  his 
pen  and  freer  still  in  conversation,  —  for  there  was  red 
blood  in  whatever  expressions  he  might  apply  to  men 
or  events,  —  he  was  true  at  heart  to  his  philosophy  and 
a  genuine  philanthropist.  His  general  scholarship 
was  remarkable  for  his  times,  and  when  a  subject 
occupied  his  thoughts  he  investigated  deeply.  Dis 
cursive  in  conversation,  and  with  a  curious  tendency 
to  paradox,  he  would  impart  striking  suggestions,  and 
even  enthusiasm.  He  corresponded  well  with  the 
eminent  savans  of  both  continents.  At  his  table  he 
ate  sparingly  for  himself  and  avoided  stimulating 
liquors,  —  having,  in  fact,  so  long  since  shown  his 
eclecticism  in  favour  of  delicate  French  wines  and 
French  cookery,  that  Patrick  Henry  once  denounced 
him  upon  the  stump  as  one  who  "  abjured  his  native 
victuals ;  "  and  here  he  appeared  easy  and  good- 
tempered,  watchful  of  the  moods  of  his  guests,  and 
taking  care  that  the  name  of  none  of  them  should 
escape  him.  Not  commonplace,  therefore,  nor  with 
a  mind  which  worked  only  in  political  grooves,  he 
well  maintained,  after  his  peculiar  fashion,  the  dignity 
of  our  most  exalted  station.  He  scrupulously  avoided 
gift-taking,  not  less  than  nepotism,  and  on  one  occa 
sion  drew  his  check  to  pay  the  duties  on  imported 


210  THOMAS  JEFFERSON, 

wines  which  he  might  have  had  free  of  the  customs ; 
making  at  the  same  time  no  merit  of  the  action,  for 
it  never  came  to  light  until  long  after  his  death. 

Jefferson's  originality  and  his  inclination  'to  popular 
methods  were  impressed  upon  Congress  at  the  earliest 
opportunity.  Discontinuing  in  1801,  when  the  new 
legislature  convened,  the  opening  spectacle  of  caval 
cade  and  ovation,  with  ceremonious  address  requiring 
a  ceremonious  answer,  after  the  British  fashion,  he  sent 
his  message  in  writing  to  the  two  Houses,  waiving  the 
formalities  of  their  solemn  response.  The  reason  he 
assigned  for  doing  so  was  the  convenience  of  Congress ; 
political  enemies  said  it  was  because  he  was  so  poor 
an  orator ;  but  the  custom,  at  all  events,  has  prevailed 
ever  since,  as  fair  and  sensible. 

But  the  same  plastic  touch  was  here  felt  in  shaping 
out  the  public  business  as  had  obtained  already  in  the 
executive  branch,  and  in  the  general  conduct  of  the 
party.  With  a  good  working  majority  in  both  Houses, 
which  the  people  in  their  State  constituencies  took 
care  should  not  henceforth  be  wanting,  we  find  for 
the  first  time  in  the  history  of  this  Union  an  adminis 
tration  thoroughly  permeating  Congress  and  bringing 
that  huge  establishment  into  full  accord.  Unlike 
Washington,  who  would  not,  and  John  Adams,  who 
could  not,  Jefferson  from  the  start  so  managed  his 
party  friends  in  each  branch  of  the  legislature  as  to 
impress  upon  them  his  own  views,  and  bring  out  the 
measures  he  most  required  ;  for,  as  he  was  wont  to 


A   REPUBLICAAT  PRESIDENT.  2 1 1 

say,  if  the  Executive  must  go  its  own  way  and  Con 
gress  theirs,  with  no  effort  to  produce  harmonious 
concert,  government  becomes  an  affair  of  chance  and 
not  design.  The  concert  so  desirable  Jefferson  thus 
accomplished,  not  by  overbearing  efforts  to  direct,  nor 
by  the  insidious  bribes  of  official  patronage,  but  rather 
by  his  own  sympathetic  appreciation  of  what  the  public 
needed,  and  by  his  resolution  never  to  secure  more 
at  a  time  than  the  public  would  bear.  He  was  not 
without  personal  experience  as  a  legislator  in  guiding 
the  action  of  legislative  bodies ;  and  the  presence, 
besides,  of  two  chief  officers  in  his  Cabinet,  — 
Madison  of  the  State  department  and  Gallatin  of  the 
Treasury,  —  both  consummate  party  leaders  while  in 
Congress,  might  help  to  explain  the  mystery.  Led, 
and  led  willingly,  the  two  Houses  of  Congress  most 
assuredly  were  ;  and  they  trusted  more  and  more  impli 
citly,  as  these  eight  years  went  on,  to  the  Executive 
inspiration,  and  rarely,  if  ever,  came  in  conflict  with 
it.  Republican  members  of  Congress  had,  indeed, 
for  the  most  part  their  own  reputations  to  make 
among  their  several  constituencies,  and  their  rising 
hopes  as  individuals  depended  largely  upon  their 
great  leader's  success. 

In  fine,  the  policy  of  this  remarkable  administration 
was  at  once  and  steadily  successful  in  winning  the 
people ;  and  the  prestige  of  enthusiasm  became  irre 
sistible  when  conjoined  with  the  prestige  of  success. 
An  Executive,  neither  the  instrument  of  others  nor 
a  betrayer  of  trusts,  we  may  regard  Jefferson  as  the 


212  THOMAS  JEFFERSON-. 

genuine  personator  of  that  to  which  France's  First 
Consul  presented  contemporaneously  the  counterfeit, 
—  a  leader  of  the  common  people  in  the  direction  of 
their  best  desires.  American  Democracy,  in  conse 
quence,  unlike  that  of  France  at  this  period,  made  a 
steady  advance  because  ruled  in  the  person  of  the 
wisest  and  truest  Democrat  of  his  times. 

Jefferson,  like  most  great  administrators,  had  quite 
probably  his  crafty  side.  A  quick  discerner  of  char 
acter,  he  was  sensible  to  every  symptom  of  personal 
dislike  or  disaffection ;  where  it  proceeded  from  hon 
est  prejudice,  no  one  could  have  striven  with  more 
kindly  and  assiduous  tact  to  convert  the  enemy  to  a 
friend ;  but  inveterate  opposition  he  put  down  reso 
lutely,  though  with  rarely  an  open  quarrel.  The 
treacherous  and  recalcitrant  among  his  associates  he 
quietly  thrust  out  from  influence ;  and  whether  it 
were  Burr's  coquettish  slyness  or  Randolph's  con 
ceit,  degradation  was  the  punishment  inflicted,  and 
the  phalanx  marched  on.  To  Monroe's  sensitiveness, 
on  the  other  hand,  Jefferson  was  very  kind,  for  he 
knew  that  his  young  friend  was  honourable. 

This  Republican  administration  was  greatly  favoured 
at  the  outset  by  the  foreign  situation  with  France  and 
Great  Britain,  as  its  predecessor  left  it.  Following 
Washington's  earlier  example  with  Great  Britain, 
John  Adams  had  at  length  procured  a  corresponding 
adjustment  of  relations  with  France,  though  at  the 
cost  of  disruption  in  his  party  and  the  bitterest  per- 


A   REPUBLICAN  PRESIDENT.  213 

sonal  humiliation.  This  peaceful  adjustment  gave  the 
United  States  a  rich  development  of  neutral  carrying 
trade  during  the  struggle  which  shook  the  thrones  of 
the  Old  World  to  their  foundations. 

Jefferson  turned  our  young  navy  to  good  account 
in  the  interval,  by  setting  to  the  civilized  world  the 
example  of  that  new  policy  for  dealing  with  the  Bar- 
bary  Powers,  which  he  had  broached  in  vain  when  at 
the  Court  of  France,  and  once  more  in  Washington's 
Cabinet.  Instead  of  paying  further  tribute  to  them 
and  taking  international  rights  as  a  purchased  con 
cession,  he  attacked  them  in  their  own  ports,  and 
scourged  them  into  decency.  The  United  States  were 
the  first  among  Christian  nations  who  thus  made 
reprisal  instead  of  ransom  the  rule  of  security  to 
rightful  commerce  under  a  national  flag  against  these 
plunderers  of  the  Mediterranean. 

But  another,  and  the  most  brilliant  exploit  of  Jef 
ferson's  whole  foreign  diplomacy,  was  in  the  peaceful 
acquisition  of  the  vast  Louisiana  territory.  Spain  had 
deeded  that  domain  to  France ;  Napoleon  for  a  brief 
space  set  his  heart  upon  using  that  important  acquisi 
tion  as  a  means  of  regaining  French  influence  upon 
the  American  continent.  But  forced  to  confine  his 
immediate  attention  to  his  more  pressing  task  of  reor 
ganizing  Europe,  he  sold  the  domain  suddenly  to  our 
new  Republic,  hoping  thereby  to  attach  this  youngest 
in  the  family  of  nations  more  strongly  to  himself  in 
his  new  war  with  Great  Britain.  The  famous  treaty, 
which  was  signed  in  May,  1803,  fixed  the  purchase 


214  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

price  at  the  moderate  sum  of  fifteen  million  dollars, 
with  the  further  assumption  of  spoliation  claims 
under  the  recent  convention,  —  a  trifling  cost,  in  com 
parison  with  the  firm  establishment  it  gave  us  on  this 
Western  continent.  By  this  sudden  and  in  its  full 
extent  unexpected  acquisition,  the  United  States  were 
indeed  placed  at  the  portals  of  an  illustrious  career. 
A  stroke  of  the  pen  relieved  us  from  the  necessity  of 
considering  further  whether  the  license  of  a  European 
sovereign  restrained  him  from  shutting  up  the  outlet 
of  our  Western  commerce  at  New  Orleans,  besides 
excluding  us,  as  he  could  hitherto  have  done,  from  the 
western  bank  of  the  Mississippi.  A  vast  and  unex 
plored  territory  was  ours  at  once ;  perpetual  immunity 
from  dangerous  rivals  and  neighbours  ;  the  sole  posses 
sion  of  this  river  of  rivers,  with  all  its  tributaries ;  a 
true  dominating  influence  in  the  affairs  of  the  North 
American  continent,  and  national  opportunities  for 
the  dim  future  almost  depressing  in  their  sublimity. 

The  peaceful  acquisition  of  Louisiana  on  terms  so 
honourable  enhanced  Jefferson's  popularity,  particu 
larly  in  the  South  and  West,  and  made  his  re-election 
to  the  Presidency  triumphant  over  all  opposition. 
But  his  conduct  of  internal  affairs,  in  the  mean  time, 
had  much  to  do  with  his  progressive  popularity.  He 
had  set  out  to  develop  not  so  much  an  external  as  an 
internal  policy,  and  it  was  upon  the  latter  that  he  at 
first  and  most  constantly  relied  to  give  Republicanism 
stability  and  earn  the  general  gratitude.  As  inciden- 


A   REPUBLICAN  PRESIDENT.  215 

tal  to  a  sweeping  and  persistent  policy  of  retrenchment 
and  frugality,  many  more  Federalist  opponents  were 
displaced  by  the  abolition  of  the  offices  they  had  filled, 
than  by  the  appointment  of  party  favourites  in  their 
place.  Retrenchment  was  exercised  everywhere, — 
in  the  abolition  of  the  excise  and  of  the  needless 
circuit  courts ;  in  the  reduction  of  diplomatic  estab 
lishments,  which  at  that  date  was  largely  left  to  the 
President's  discretion ;  in  the  consolidation  of  various 
revenue  offices ;  and  in  the  reduction  of  army  and 
navy  expenditures.  Estimates  and  economies  had 
always  interested  a  mind  curiously  delighting  in  fig 
ures  and  statistics  ;  and  Jefferson  laboured  to  simplify 
American  finances  so  as  to  render  them,  to  use  his 
own  expression,  as  clear  and  intelligent  as  a  mer 
chant's  books. 

For  six  years  at  least  of  this  sanguine  administra 
tion,  the  annual  balance  sheet  of  the  Treasury  showed 
a  condition  of  affairs  highly  prosperous  and  encour 
aging.  Our  neutral  commerce  expanded  so  rapidly 
that  the  receipts  of  custom  crept  constantly  upward, 
—  all  other  modes  of  raising  a  revenue  by  taxation 
having  been  speedily  dispensed  with.  The  income 
from  the  sales  of  public  lands  nearly  trebled  during 
Jefferson's  first  term  of  office.  To  use  his  own  words, 
the  purse  was  supplied  by  economies  so  as  to  support 
the  government  properly  and  apply  $7,300,000  a  year 
toward  reducing  the  public  debt;  discontinuing  a 
great  part  of  the  former  expense  on  armies  and 


216  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

navies,  and  yet  leaving  enough  to  protect  our  coun 
try  and  commerce ;  purchasing  the  vast  Louisiana 
domain,  and  yet  asking  neither  a  new  tax  nor  another 
soldier,  but  providing  that  this  domain  should  pay  for 
itself  before  the  purchase  money  fell  due.  With  the 
annual  surplus  Gallatin  expected  to  cancel  the  national 
debt  about  the  year  1817.  If  economies  fell  somewhat 
short  of  the  estimates,  the  increase  of  import  revenue 
beyond  all  expectation  carried  the  young  nation  tri 
umphantly  in  the  direction  desired,  notwithstanding  a 
protracted  war  with  the  Barbary  Powers. 

Meanwhile  humanity  went  hopefully  forward  to 
win  in  our  Union  the  last  great  victories  of  this 
earlier  age.  New  Jersey,  following  New  York  in 
adopting  the  plan  of  gradual  emancipation,  was  the 
last  of  the  old  thirteen  States  to  join  spontaneously 
the  alliance  of  freedom.  When  1808  arrived,  the 
barrier  set  by  our  federal  Constitution  was  passed 
and  the  African  slave-trade  abolished  by  an  act  of 
Congress  to  which  Jefferson  set  his  signature.  Gladly 
would  he  have  seen  his  native  State  obey  at  this  time 
the  better  inspirations  of  Revolutionary  days,  and 
shake  off  a  social  bondage  which  cursed  reciprocally. 
That  might  not  be ;  but  in  his  territorial  management 
he  employed  his  philanthropy  with  good  effect  upon 
the  Western  Indians.  Their  claims  of  occupancy 
were  respected,  and  at  the  same  time  extinguished 
rapidly  by  fair  purchase  as  openings  became  need 
ful  for  Western  settlements.  In  furtherance  of  a  wise 
policy  which  experience  had  slowly  developed,  specu' 


A   REPUBLICAN  PRESIDENT.  217 

lations  of  land  companies  in  this  broad  Mississippi 
valley  were  discouraged,  and  the  pioneer  bought  his 
farm  at  a  minimum  cost  by  direct  purchase  from  the 
government.  As  for  the  dusky  aborigines  who  chased 
the  buffalo,  untamed  like  themselves,  Jefferson  longed 
to  reclaim  them  from  the  savage  state,  and  lead  them, 
if  possible,  to  civilized  pursuits  and  settlements  in 
fixed  habitations.  "  In  truth,"  he  wrote,  "  the  ulti 
mate  point  of  rest  and  happiness  for  them  is  to  let 
our  settlements  and  theirs  meet  and  blend  together, 
to  intermix  and  become  one  people." 

But  one  more  Congressional  cycle  remained,  by 
March,  1807,  to  round  out  a  long  administration, 
peaceful,  progressive,  and  constantly  popular  beyond 
all  precedent.  Six  years  of  Jefferson  had  fixed  im 
mutably  the  republican  character  of  these  institutions, 
and  vindicated  this  new  American  experiment  of  self- 
government.  Our  people  were  confident  of  their 
strength.  The  attractive  example  of  honest  economy 
and  simplicity  in  the  federal  head  so  penetrated 
States  and  municipalities  that  even  parsimony  had 
grown  more  popular  than  a  squandering  munificence. 

The  time  now  rapidly  approached,  when,  to  judge 
by  existing  estimates,  the  Revolutionary  debt  would  be 
wholly  liquidated  as  it  matured,  leaving  the  national 
treasury  full  to  overflowing  and  an  annual  surplus  rev 
enue  to  be  disposed  of.  Jefferson's  annual  Message 
to  Congress  in  1806  had  recommended  a  policy  of 
internal  improvements,  with  liberal  establishments  of 


2l8  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

science  and  education,  for  whose  proper  scope  an 
amendment  of  the  Constitution  would,  he  thought,  be 
desirable ;  and  the  means  of  carrying  out  these  mag 
nificent  projects  he  hoped  to  leave  to  his  countrymen 
as  a  last  bequest  of  patriotism.  But  now,  suddenly 
and  unexpectedly,  the  storm  area  of  European  war 
struck  our  Western  coast.  Great  Britain  with  her 
Orders  in  Council,  on  the  one  hand,  and  Napoleon 
with  his  Berlin  and  Milan  decrees,  bore  down  upon 
our  American  commerce,  already  too  protuberant  for 
these  belligerent  powers  to  respect  longer,  while  it 
enriched  itself  at  their  sacrifice. 

The  death  struggle  was  coming  for  the  European 
balance  of  power,  and  the  chief  powers  engaged  in  it 
had  ceased  to  care  for  international  restraints.  The 
adversaries  now  fought  with  whatever  weapons  might 
give  conquest  and  supremacy.  Each  was  agreed  in 
the  policy  of  compelling  all  remaining  neutrals  like 
the  United  States  to  become  allies  or  tributaries,  or 
else  crushing  out  their  rich  commerce  altogether. 

It  was  in  vain,  at  such  a  juncture,  that  our  govern 
ment  insisted  on  treaty  rights  or  the  observances  of 
the  law  of  nations,  as  credentials  for  maintaining  their 
peaceful  pursuits  longer  on  the  ocean.  Jefferson  had 
already  resisted  the  British  right  of  search  and  refused 
a  new  treaty  with  Great  Britain,  which  left  that  pre 
tentious  claim  outstanding.  The  outrage  of  the 
"  Chesapeake,"  when  the  crew  of  an  American  public 
vessel  were  mustered  on  deck  by  British  naval  officers 


A   REPUBLICAN  PRESIDENT.  219 

for  the  abduction  of  its  seamen  as  British  subjects, 
made  a  rankling  wound  which  was  not  healed  by  the 
reparation  tardily  offered.  And  worse  still  were  those 
decrees  of  pretended  retaliation  upon  one  another  by 
the  great  belligerents,  under  whose  operation  our 
commerce  was  threatened  by  the  Scylla  and  Charyb- 
dis  of  confiscation,  as  it  chose  to  obey  the  one  or  the 
other. 

Jefferson's  plan  for  this  latter  culmination  was 
awaited  and  implicitly  followed  by  Congress.  He 
proposed  an  embargo,  in  the  vain  hope  of  bringing 
either  France  or  Great  Britain  to  terms.  The  act 
passed  Congress,  December,  1807,  in  secret  session, 
after  a  debate  of  scarcely  three  days  in  the  House 
and  four  hours  in  the  Senate.  Astonishing,  surely, 
the  magical  spell  which  a  chief  magistrate  had  laid 
upon  a  legislature  as  free  and  uncorrupt  as  ever  assem 
bled,  when  the  most  rigorous  measure  ever  yet  enacted 
by  our  national  legislature,  as  affecting  private  property 
on  the  mere  anticipation  of  war,  passed  thus  readily. 
The  forcible  detention  of  our  own  ships  and  cargoes 
in  order  to  avoid  sure  capture  was  at  first  yielded  to 
with  comparative  loyalty;  but  the  resistance  soon 
became  so  great  in  the  Eastern  States,  the  seat  of 
American  commerce,  that  Congress  in  its  final  session, 
with  the  administration,  had  to  beat  a  precipitate 
retreat. 

That  final  winter's  trial  was  the  sorest  of  Jefferson's 
whole  life.  He  had  made  his  last  effort  to  maintain 
our  neutral  independence  by  diplomatic  shifts  which 


220  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

avoided  war  by  appealing  to  the  honour  or  self-interest 
of  European  powers  with  whom  we  held  intercourse. 
But  the  experiment  failed,  and  with  it  the  hope  of 
peace  and  internal  development  he  had  so  fondly 
cherished.  He  had  sunk  in  public  estimation,  as  the 
wizard  long  infallible,  who  fails  palpably  at  length  to 
perform  the  expected  miracle ;  and  sensitive  of  his 
loss  of  popularity,  as  he  had  been  in  earlier  times 
when  Governor  of  Virginia,  he  left  the  Executive 
station  in  March,  weary  and  disappointed,  glad  sin 
cerely  to  escape  the  cares  of  office;  and  yet 
his  success  had  been  sufficient  for  his  permanent 
fame. 

A  few  words  concerning  the  antagonism  which  had 
developed  between  this  administration  and  the 
Supreme  Court  may  be  here  appropriate.  Men  are 
often  prone  to  attribute  more  to  a  leader  of  strong 
character  and  intellect  than  he  can  fairly  claim.  This 
is  peculiarly  a  professional  foible;  and  professional 
men  whose  political  bias  has  led  them  to  sneer  at 
Jefferson  and  to  despise  Madison  as  no  lawyers 
at  all,  will  laud  and  magnify  Hamilton  as  the  origi 
nating  genius  of  our  federal  Constitution,  and  Marshall 
as  its  prime  expounder.  But  there  were  State  judges 
before  Marshall  who  had  ruled  that  legislation  which 
comes  in  conflict  with  the  written  instrument  of  gov 
ernment  must  fail ;  and  some  of  Marshall's  most 
famous  opinions  which  deduce  implied  powers  from 
the  federal  instrument  have  failed  of  their  full  force. 


A   REPUBLICAN  PRESIDENT.  221 

We  would  not  abate  a  tithe  of  the  just  veneration 
and  renown  with  which  Marshall  inspired  the  American 
people,  after  time  had  confirmed  him  in  that  exalted 
judicial  independence  from  whose  height  the  sea  of 
party  strife  seems  wrinkling  in  the  distance.  But 
Marshall  in  these  earlier  days  was  fresh  from  party 
politics,  and  his  first  great  effort  from  the  bench  was 
to  bend  the  Republican  administration  to  the  fulfil 
ment  of  the  ignoble  task  he  had  attempted  in  the 
State  department,  against  the  wishes  and  choice  of 
the  people,  to  intrench  the  defeated  party  in  the 
offices.  The  effort  in  Marbury  v.  Madison  was  that 
of  a  Chief  Justice  who  felt  still  the  vindictive  pas 
sions  of  a  Secretary  of  State. 

John  Marshall  did  not  come  into  conflict  with 
Jefferson's  administration  on  great  issues  of  constitu 
tional  authority;  the  collision  was  rather  a  political 
and  personal  one.  Jefferson,  Madison,  and  Marshall 
were  old  neighbours  and  Virginians ;  each  knew  the 
others  too  well  to  be  extravagant  over  faults  or  virtues. 
The  two  former  as  Presidents  in  turn  did  not  admin 
ister  the  government  on  the  theory  of  a  weak  or  a 
dissoluble  State  compact ;  and  they  neither  needed 
help  nor  endured  constraint  from  the  bench  for  set 
tling  this  constitutional  system  into  an  efficient  one. 
Judicial  doctrines  of  the  United  States  Bank,  and  of 
the  power  to  spend  the  revenues  of  this  Union  upon 
roads  and  canals,  belong  in  fact  to  a  later  epoch. 
Jefferson  had  not  hesitated  to  meet  the  issue  too 
eagerly  thrust  upon  him  of  suffering  his  political 


222  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

foes  to  retreat  into  the  life  offices  and  make  a  last 
barricade  of  the  federal  patronage.  Marshall  was 
humiliated  by  the  failure  of  the  midnight  appoint 
ments,  and  later  by  the  repeal  of  the  act  which 
established  the  circuit  courts.  Nor  had  his  partisan 
resentment  wholly  passed  away,  we  may  well  surmise, 
when  Aaron  Burr,  bankrupt  in  purse  and  reputation, 
came  in  peril  of  the  gallows  after  the  exposure  of  his 
treasonable  Western  conspiracy  during  Jefferson's 
second  term.  If  the  President  had  urged  on  the 
prosecution,  too  eager,  as  it  seemed,  to  crush  the  man 
who  had  once  played  treacherously  to  supplant  him, 
Marshall  appeared  not  less  sedulous  to  protect  the 
culprit.  Whether  upon  sound  reasoning  or  otherwise, 
the  chief  justice  at  Burr's  trial  so  laid  down  the  law, 
and  strained  the  admission  of  testimony,  that  prose 
cutions  for  treason  against  the  Union  must  since  have 
been  scarcely  worth  attempting,  on  the  strength  of 
such  a  precedent.  And  while  the  case  was  pending 
he  sent  a  subpoena  ordering  the  President  himself 
to  appear  at  the  trial  and  bring  a  certain  paper 
with  him.  What  process  had  the  common  law 
ever  invoked  to  subordinate  the  sovereign  to  the 
courts?  Jefferson  sustained  well  the  dignity  of  his 
station  as  the  American  chief  executive.  He  gave 
the  summons  no  notice ;  he  would  not  go,  but 
informed  the  district  attorney  that  the  paper  might 
be  obtained  some  other  way.  Marshall  was  wise 
enough  to  press  the  experiment  no  further ;  and  our 
Supreme  Court,  in  a  later  and  wiser  generation,  has 


A  REPUBLICAN  PRESIDENT.  223 

refused  to  issue  mandates  to  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  when  convinced  of  its  own  powerless- 
ness  to  compel  obedience.1 

1  See  Mississippi  v.  Johnson,  4  Wall.  475,  and  the  briefs  of 
counsel  which  discuss  this  incident. 


224  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

FOUNDER   OF   A    UNIVERSITY. 
1809-1826. 

THOUGH  harassed  and  disappointed  over  the  failure  of 
his  embargo  experiment,  when  he  retired  from  the 
Presidency,  Jefferson  was,  after  all,  too  much  of  a 
philosopher  to  take  the  vexation  long  to  heart.  "  I 
have  learned  to  expect,"  were  his  own  judicious  words 
in  his  first  inaugural  address,  "  that  it  will  rarely  fall 
to  the  lot  of  imperfect  man  to  retire  from  this  station 
with  the  reputation  and  the  favour  which  bring  him  into 
it."  The  motives  of  his  embargo  were  honest,  at  all 
events,  notwithstanding  the  bitter  aspersions  of  politi 
cal  enemies  at  the  time ;  and  that  curious  diplomatic 
resort  evinced  the  original  bent  of  his  mind  and  his 
philanthropic  distaste  for  open  war.  War,  as  the 
event  proved,  was  the  only  adequate  means  left  for 
vindicating  our  independence  as  a  nation,  and  divor 
cing  this  hemisphere  finally  and  forever  from  European 
domination.  Under  the  calm  and  logical  Madison, 
Jefferson's  next  successor,  with  non-importation  as  the 
weapon  which  Congress  now  selected  for  negotiating 
between  France  and  Great  Britain,  we  soon  reached 
a  point  where  it  was  impossible  to  remain,  dangerous 
to  advance,  but  infamous  to  recede. 


FOUNDER   OF  A    UNIVERSITY.  225 

Meanwhile  the  ex- President  remained  too  closely 
bound  to  his  successor  in  ties  of  friendship  not  to 
influence  the  next  administration,  and  too  deeply 
rooted  in  the  hearts  of  his  fellow-countrymen  not  to 
regain  popularity  the  moment  there  was  chance  for 
comparison.  John  Randolph  once  likened  Jefferson's 
second  term  to  Pharaoh's  lean  kine,  which  swallowed 
up  the  fat  ones ;  and  yet,  to  correct  the  simile,  it  was 
nearly  seven  years  of  plenty  to  one  of  famine.  But 
that  year  of  famine  had  been  his  last,  and  it  is  the 
final  exit  which  gives  applause  to  an  administration 
or  denies  it.  In  the  five  more  years  of  misery  and 
humiliation  to  our  people  before  Napoleon's  once 
dazzling  star  faded  in  the  horizon,  thousands  of 
Americans  looked  back  with  fond  regret  upon  the 
earlier  and  prosperous  era  of  Jeffersonian  economies 
and  simplicity,  and  so,  once  more,  through  the  hard 
years  of  recuperation  under  Monroe's  administration, 
which  followed  the  inflated  prosperity  of  exhausting 
war. 

To  Madison  and  Monroe,  the  greatest  of  Virginia's 
sons  who  had  followed  his  Republican  lead,  Jefferson 
proved  a  constant  friend.  It  was  a  final  proof  of  his 
firm  but  delicate  management  in  political  affairs  that 
this  new  Virginia  dynasty  held  the  chief  magistracy  of 
our  Union  for  twenty-four  uninterrupted  years.  Their 
own  pre-eminent  abilities  and  public  desert  alone  did 
not  secure  Madison  and  Monroe  this  enviable  dis 
tinction  ;  but  the  gentle  tact  of  their  chieftain,  also, 
in  assuaging  their  injurious  rivalry,  and  reconciling  the 
15 


226  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

latter  to  a  subordinate  station  where  he  might  gain  by 
co-operating.  Jackson,  in  after  years,  a  chieftain  of 
very  different  methods,  compelled  the  Democracy, 
upon  his  retirement,  to  take  his  favourite  for  its  next 
candidate  ;  but  the  dictation  did  him  and  the  successor 
injury.  Jefferson  preferred  Madison  to  Monroe,  for 
immediate  promotion,  as  he  should  have  done,  and 
showed  the  latter,  besides,  that  his  chance  lay  in 
work,  not  rivalry.  The  sobriety  of  Madison,  a  man 
almost  unrivalled  in  dispassionate  debate,  his  pru 
dence,  his  logical  powers,  his  sound  but  conservative 
statesmanship,  his  lofty  patriotism  and  remarkable 
public  experience,  —  all  his  happy  qualifications  for 
supreme  office,  with  just  that  want  of  confident  enthu 
siasm,  nerve,  and  fertility  of  resources,  besides,  which 
placed  him  at  disadvantageous  contrast  with  his  great 
predecessor,  —  are  as  clear  as  sunshine  ;  but  Monroe 
is  never  to  be  clearly  understood  by  posterity,  without 
allowing  that,  pure  in  heart  and  lofty  in  aims,  as  he 
always  was,  his  sensitive  feelings  and  rash  impulsive 
ness  carried  him  often  astray  in  earlier  life,  until,  after 
long  schooling  in  the  lessons  of  intellectual  patience, 
he  broadened  into  his  best. 

On  the  important  measures  of  the  next  sixteen 
years,  and  more  especially  through  Madison's  imme 
diate  Presidency,  Jefferson  was  a  free  and  confiden 
tial  counsellor.  The  relations,  in  fact,  which  bound 
together  in  perfect  harmony  Jefferson  and  Madison 
through  the  last  twenty-five  years  of  public  activity  in 


FOUNDER   OF  A    UNIVERSITY.  227 

their  joint  lives,  is  without  a  parallel  in  popular  gov 
ernment  :  so  well  fitted  by  differences  of  age,  talent, 
experience,  and  temperament,  was  the  one  to  direct 
and  the  other  to  follow  gracefully ;  Jefferson,  with 
pen  or  voice,  tingeing  each  expression  with  the  deep 
feeling  which  glowed  within  him,  while  Madison 
shrunk  from  all  personalities,  and  linked  calm  premi 
ses  to  conclusions  as  though  human  passions  bent 
implicitly  to  reason.  The  one  welcomed,  no  doubt, 
the  restraints  of  judicious  counsel,  and  the  other  that 
invigoration  which  comes  in  glowing  moments  from 
prophetic  and  confident  intuition. 

During  Monroe's  administration  Jefferson  ceased 
to  watch  public  affairs  closely,  and  seldom  gave  coun 
sel.  But  that  tranquil  "  era  of  good  feeling  "  when 
parties  were  amalgamated,  he  did  not  believe  would 
long  continue.  In  the  angry  strife  over  the  Missouri 
question  his  bias  went  insensibly  to  the  South,  and  the 
compromise  settlement  by  a  geographical  line  made 
him  almost  despondent  of  the  future.  "  The  question 
sleeps  for  the  present,  but  is  not  dead,"  was  his  fore 
boding  comment.  Yet  once  and  again  he  tried  to 
rally  Virginia  to  purge  her  institutions  of  slavery,  and 
extirpate  the  curse  before  it  was  too  late.  When,  in 
1823,  President  Monroe  consulted  him  upon  the 
plans  of  the  Holy  Alliance,  proposing  that  famous 
announcement  which  still  immortalizes  his  name,  Jef 
ferson's  response  rang  out  once  more  as  of  old.  For 
in  his  own  remarkable  letters,  scouring  through  the 
symptoms  of  the  future,  one  might  have  seen  the 


228  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

germ  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  twenty  years  before. 
"  This  question,"  he  now  wrote  enthusiastically,  "is 
the  most  momentous  which  has  ever  been  offered  to 
my  contemplation  since  that  of  Independence.  That 
made  us  a  nation ;  this  sets  our  compass,  and  points 
the  course  which  we  are  to  steer  through  the  ocean 
of  time  opening  on  us.  ...  Our  first  and  funda 
mental  maxim  should  be,  never  to  entangle  ourselves 
in  the  broils  of  Europe ;  our  second,  never  to  suffer 
Europe  to  meddle  with  cis- Atlantic  affairs." 

As  a  further  illustration  of  his  kindness  of  heart, 
Jefferson  rescued  his  perishing  friendship  with  old 
John  Adams,  which  presidential  rivalry  had  once  so 
nearly  wrecked,  by  laying  hold  of  opportunities,  while 
in  and  out  of  office,  for  renewing  their  mutual  confi 
dences.  Through  a  mutual  friend  a  reconciliation 
was  finally  established  soon  after  Jefferson's  retire 
ment  from  office ;  and  the  country  long  enjoyed  the 
glad  spectacle  of  their  two  venerable  ex- Presidents 
united  in  brotherly  ties  and  in  the  substantial  support 
of  their  successor's  policy  through  the  perilous  era  of 
a  new  war  with  the  mother- country.  Though  never 
meeting  again  in  person,  the  intimacy  of  Adams  and 
Jefferson  was  kept  up  for  the  rest  of  their  lives  by 
correspondence  ;  and  a  veteran  intimacy  of  patriotic 
souls  more  touching  was  never  beheld.  Both  loved 
in  their  later  letters  to  discourse  of  old  Revolutionary 
events  and  of  religion ;  and  on  the  latter  subject 
they  were  soon  in  close  accord. 


FOUNDER   OF  A    UNIVERSITY.  229 

Jefferson's  religious  views,  indeed,  were  liable,  while 
he  lived,  to  the  grossest  misconception.  The  ortho 
dox  clergy  of  New  England  had  identified  him,  while 
politics  raged  hotly,  with  all  the  worst  excesses  of  the 
French  Revolution ;  they  had  coupled  his  name  with 
Tom  Paine's,  and  warned  their  congregations  in  1800 
that  the  election  of  such  a  man  would  be  the  signal 
for  breaking  down  the  pulpits,  burning  up  Bibles,  and 
enthroning  the  goddess  of  reason.  To  such  anathemas 
of  the  Puritan  priesthood  Jefferson  made  response 
quite  as  severe,  which  he  was  capable  of  doing.  But 
in  truth  his  own  views  clearly  receded  from  French 
scepticism  after  his  return  from  Paris.  Never  a  blas 
phemer  nor  a  scoffer  at  divine  truths,  but  one  rather 
who  inclined  to  apply  scientific  methods,  imperfect 
as  they  must  ever  continue,  to  resolving  those  prob 
lems  of  future  existence  which  are  clear  only  to  the 
eye  of  faith,  Jefferson  respected  steadily  the  right  of 
private  judgment  in  the  interpretation  of  creeds.  He 
actually  investigated  for  himself  (which  is  more  than 
the  flatterers  of  science  are  apt  to  do),  and  claimed 
consistently  that  religion  was  a  matter  which  lay 
between  man  and  his  God,  evinced,  as  concerns  the 
world,  by  each  one's  daily  life.  He  was  no  foe  to  the 
moralities  and  decencies  of  life;  but  in  his  own 
public  example  singularly  pure  in  his  visible  relations, 
attached  to  the  home  life,  constant  to  the  memory  of 
the  wife  who  had  died  early,  and  both  a  father  and 
mother  to  the  two  young  daughters.  In  religious 
views,  during  these  last  years  of  final  retirement  from 


230  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

office,  he  came  into  near  accord  with  Priestley,  a  man 
whom  John  Adams  also  admired  for  his  purity  of 
heart ;  and  he  showed  much  fondness  for  comparing 
Christ's  teachings  with  those  of  the  chief  pagan  phi 
losophers.  Rejecting,  or  rather  waiving  the  points 
of  Scriptural  inspiration,  like  many  a  New  England 
Unitarian  since,  Jefferson  was  certainly  not  less  than 
a  Deist ;  and  more  than  that,  he  was  well  convinced 
of  the  loftiness  of  the  Christian  system,  and  of  the 
sublime  humanity  of  its  great  Founder.  While  yet 
President  of  the  United  States,  he  was  seen  sitting 
with  the  Bible  in  his  hands  for  hours,  upon  the 
untimely  death  of  his  younger  daughter,  Maria,  whose 
loss  left  the  world  less  bright  to  him ;  and  again,  we 
may  observe  him  cutting  out  from  a  Testament  the 
discourses  of  Christ,  and  pasting  them  upon  the 
leaves  of  a  scrap-book  in  avowed  admiration  of  "  the 
most  innocent,  the  most  benevolent,  the  most  eloquent 
and  sublime  character  that  has  ever  been  exhibited 
to  men." 

During  the  last  years  of  his  prolonged  life,  how 
ever,  Jefferson  devoted  himself  most  strenuously  to 
the  work  of  higher  education  in  his  State  and  neigh 
bourhood,  renewing  the  fond  affection  of  his  youth. 
The  University  of  Virginia  —  "this  darling  child  of  his 
old  age,"  as  Mr.  Randall  so  happily  terms  it  — was  the 
fruition  of  schemes  cherished  long  before  by  Jefferson, 
while  he  was  Governor  of  his  State,  and  developed 
during  his  later  diplomatic  sojourn  abroad.  He  had 


FOUNDER   OF  A    UNIVERSITY.  231 

postponed  the  subject  necessarily  while  engrossed 
in  the  cares  of  State,  but  he  had  never  forgotten  it. 
With  the  innate  pride  of  a  Virginian,  Jefferson  had 
long  aimed  to  place  the  Old  Dominion  foremost 
among  the  whole  sisterhood  of  States  in  elevating 
the  standards  of  education,  as  she  already  was  fore 
most  in  years  and  political  influence.  As  early  as 
1779  he  had  introduced  into  the  General  Assembly  a 
bill  for  the  wider  diffusion  of  knowledge  in  the  State. 
Its  unit  was  to  be  the  district  school,  which  had  proved 
so  valuable  an  institution  in  New  England ;  next  in 
grade  were  proposed  grammar  and  classical  schools 
still  open  to  all  youth ;  and,  crowning  the  whole,  a  State 
university,  to  which,  by  a  system  of  public  selection, 
the  choicest  youth  of  the  lower  grades,  however  poor 
or  humble,  might  be  promoted.  That  scheme  was 
laid  aside,  for  few  Virginians  of  influence  cared  for 
the  education  of  the  poorer  trash  about  them;  but 
the  connection  of  popular  and  higher  education  in  a 
State  as  a  comprehensive  whole,  always  remained  in 
Jefferson's  mind,  and  to  the  end  of  his  life  he  cher 
ished  the  wish  of  bringing  to  light  by  such  processes 
that  genius  which  lies  latent  in  the  common  people, 
and  developing  it  with  the  full  assistance  of  a  lib 
eral  education,  generously  supplied  from  the  public 
treasury. 

Little  as  New  England  orthodoxy  had  sympathized 
with  him  personally,  Jefferson  greatly  admired  the 
common-school  system  of  that  section  of  the  Union ; 
but  he  could  not  persuade  his  own  State  to  adopt  it. 


232  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

With  corresponding  ill-success,  too,  did  he  strive  to 
impress  upon  Virginia  the  compact  New  England 
establishment  of  township  governments,  those  prima 
ries  of  rugged  independence  and  patriotic  self-respect, 
whose  energetic  concentration,  unlike  the  diffuse  efforts 
of  his  own  rural  neighbours  in  county  meetings,  he  had 
experienced  not  with  unmixed  displeasure  at  the  time 
of  the  embargo.  "  I  felt,"  he  said,  "  the  foundations 
of  the  government  shaken  under  my  feet  by  the  New 
England  townships.  There  was  not  an  individual  in 
these  States  whose  body  was  not  thrown  with  all  its 
momentum  into  action." 

This  later  age  of  progressive  homogeneousness 
has  seen  Virginia  launched  at  length  into  the  gratify 
ing  experiment  of  a  comprehensive  common-school 
instruction;  while  Jefferson's  own  practical  accom 
plishments  were  necessarily  confined  to  the  more 
exclusive  scope  of  University  education.  While  Gov 
ernor  of  Virginia  he  had  contemplated  his  own  Alma 
Mater,  William  and  Mary  College,  as  the  appropriate 
seat  of  supreme  learning,  and  had  somewhat  earlier 
tried  his  hand  at  broadening  its  obviously  cramped 
foundations.  But  while  abroad  his  mind  became 
familiarized  with  European  university  methods,  from 
whose  comparative  study  he  returned  home  with 
ideas  which  not  even  Harvard,  Yale,  or  Princeton  had 
yet  imported.  Hitherto  our  best  type  of  higher 
education  was  British-colonial ;  we  emulated  Oxford 
and  Cambridge,  but  resembled  rather  Eton,  Harrow, 
Rugby,  and  the  other  higher  English  schools  in  stan- 


FOUNDER  OF  A    UNIVERSITY.  233 

dard.  Jefferson's  educational  ideas  were  eclectic,  and 
embraced  whatever  was  admirable  in  the  continental 
establishments  of  learning.  Edinburgh  and  Geneva 
he  praised  as  "the  two  eyes  of  Europe."  No  longer 
satisfied  with  the  usual  curriculum  whose  stereotyped 
course  of  instruction  was  confined  to  Greek  and  Latin, 
with  a  smattering  of  other  liberal  studies,  his  plans  em 
braced  a  broad  classification  of  useful  sciences,  adding, 
as  university  features,  military  education,  technology, 
agriculture,  and  the  liberal  arts.  From  the  college  he 
expanded  into  the  true  university  idea  of  maintaining 
distinct  professional  schools,  where  not  only  law, 
theology,  and  medicine  might  be  taught,  but  other 
branches  of  generous  training.  So  expansile  a 
scheme  of  higher  education  he  did  not  expect  to 
realize  at  once  upon  the  bounty  of  Virginia ;  but  the 
bold  outlines  of  such  a  plan  may  be  seen  projected 
in  his  correspondence  about  the  close  of  the  war  with 
Great  Britain. 

Jefferson's  more  immediate  schemes  developed 
from  a  languishing  local  seminary  at  Charlottesville 
known  as  the  "  Albemarle  Academy."  With  the  aid 
of  other  private  subscriptions  besides  his  own,  he 
procured  an  enlargement  of  its  operations  into  an 
institution  which  was  incorporated  in  1816  by  the 
name  of  the  "Central  College."  The  Presidential 
trio  of  Virginians,  Jefferson,  Madison,  and  Monroe, 
led  at  once  the  illustrious  list  of  its  board  of  visitors ; 
and  under  such  powerful  auspices  an  act  from  the 


234  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

Virginia  legislature  was  procured,  two  years  later, 
which  appropriated  fifteen  thousand  dollars  a  year  for 
the  support  of  a  State  university  where  all  the  branches 
of  useful  science  should  be  taught.  Jefferson's  advice 
swayed  the  opinions  of  colleagues  only  less  distin 
guished  than  himself,  appointed  on  a  commission  by 
the  Governor  of  the  State  to  report  a  site,  a  plan  of 
building,  and  a  scheme  of  instruction  to  the  next 
legislature.  Their  report,  which  Jefferson  prepared, 
was  a  remarkable  one;  and  acting  upon  its  sugges 
tions,  the  legislature  passed  in  1819  the  act  which 
founded  the  "  University  of  Virginia  "  for  the  first 
time  as  a  definite  institution,  with  "  Central  College  " 
at  Charlottesville  for  its  basis. 

Of  a  board  of  seven  visitors  appointed  by  the 
Executive  of  the  State,  under  this  statute,  to  super 
vise  and  control  the  affairs  of  the  University,  Jefferson 
was  chosen  rector ;  and  henceforth,  during  the  last 
seven  years  of  his  life,  the  venerable  statesman,  soon 
to  enter  the  rare  cycle  of  fourscore,  became  the 
directing  and  shaping  power  of  the  whole  enterprise. 
His  immediate  proximity  to  the  site  selected,  his 
transcendent  fame,  and  the  supreme  interest  he  had 
manifested  in  the  cause  induced  the  other  visitors  to 
leave  in  his  hands  almost  the  entire  practical  develop 
ment  of  this  new  enterprise. 

Not  only  in  devising  the  entire  system  of  instruc 
tion  to  be  pursued,  but  in  planning  and  erecting  the 
buildings  and  providing  for  the  material  comfort  and 
accommodation  of  future  students  and  instructors,  did 


FOUNDER   OF  A    UNIVERSITY.  235 

Jefferson's  creative  skill  .dominate.  It  was  his  policy 
from  the  outset  to  push  forward  a  work  of  magnifi 
cent  construction,  and  rear  in  his  little  market  town, 
hitherto  attractive  only  from  its  salubrious  mountain 
surroundings,  an  architectural  pile  which  should 
instantly  appeal  to  the  imagination,  and  attract  from 
abroad  such  distinguished  savants  as  he  proposed 
inviting  presently  to  fill  the  chief  professorships.  The 
general  arrangement  of  the  university  buildings  was 
accordingly  unique.  They  occupied  three  sides  of 
a  vast  quadrangular  lawn  fronting  inward,  the  two 
longest  of  them  being  devoted  to  "pavilions,"  or 
professors'  houses,  with  intervening  rows  of  students' 
apartments  more  modest  in  height,  and  consisting  of 
a  single  story,  faced  with  colonnades  which  opened, 
like  all  other  main  aspects  of  this  academic  village, 
upon  the  grassy  enclosure  of  the  great  campus.  A 
large  rotunda  for  library  and  lecture  halls  rose  superbly 
from  the  third  and  intermediate  side,  approached  by 
long  steps  and  lofty  columns  and  surmounted  by  a 
spacious  dome.  Columns  and  capitals  were  chiselled 
in  Italy;  fragments  of  the  celebrated  Roman  ruins 
seemed  visible  from  various  points  of  view ;  and  the 
whole  structure  and  arrangement  of  the  vast  collegiate 
quadrangle,  open  at  the  lower  end,  might  suggest  in 
sombre  red  brick  St.  Peter's  with  its  cloistered 
approach  on  either  side,  except  that  here,  in  place  of 
the  great  Christian  edifice  itself  for  a  central  glory, 
rose  a  model  of  the  Roman  Pantheon,  reduced  to  one 
third  of  its  original  size,  and  here  adapted  to  the 


236  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

temple,  not  of  all  the  gods,  nor  of  the  one  living  God, 
but  of  all  sciences.  Something  of  Monticello,  too, 
was  in  the  atmosphere  of  this  unique  creation. 

These  university  buildings,  still  preserved  as  Jeffer 
son  planned  and  built  them,  exhibit,  like  his  famed 
dwelling-house,  the  combined  effects  of  study  and 
foreign  observation,  —  not  always  harmonious,  to  be 
sure,  but  with  picturesque  and  delicate  effect  in 
bringing  the  best  influences  of  the  Old  World  to 
grace  the  growth  of  the  new.  Roman,  Tuscan,  and 
mediaeval  architecture  are  here  cunningly  arranged  to 
make  their  silent  impression  upon  the  American  youth ; 
and  in  marble  capitals  and  classic  columns,  as  one 
saunters  to  and  from  his  daily  recitations,  the  frag 
mentary  remnants  of  world- renowned  edifices  haunt 
insensibly  his  imagination.  The  very  ground  plans  of 
the  buildings  and  every  material  estimate  and  archi 
tectural  detail,  down  to  the  mortar  and  foundation 
stones,  were  the  historic  product  of  one  constructive 
mind. 

Jefferson  gave  freely  and  unstintingly  of  his  time 
and  energy  to  the  cause  of  the  university;  which 
alone,  from  posterity's  standpoint,  must  prove  of 
incalculable  worth.  In  his  correspondence  with  the 
great  and  learned  of  both  hemispheres  he  advertised 
the  institution  far  and  wide.  It  was  the  last  fond 
darling  of  his  enthusiasm.  But  the  immediate  cost 
of  the  buildings  —  about  three  hundred  thousand 
dollars  —  so  far  exceeded  the  general  expectation  as 


FOUNDER   OF  A    UNIVERSITY.  237 

to  produce  great  discontent  in  the  State,  and  threaten 
the  enterprise  with  failure  ;  and  some  Virginians  went 
so  far  as  to  charge  Jefferson  and  his  able  coadjutor 
and  confidant,  Joseph  Carrington  Cabell,  who  served 
in  the  legislature,  with  drawing  the  State  on  artfully 
from  one  appropriation  to  another  until  it  foundered 
in  the  mire  of  palpable  indebtedness.  Indeed  these 
earnest  patrons  had  constant  need  of  their  most 
ingenious  skill  and  resources  to  establish  this  new 
university  securely;  for  against  them  were  arrayed 
the  public  sloth  and  parsimony  which  counted  for 
cardinal  virtues  in  Southern  State  administration  at 
that  epoch  \  the  powerful  opposition  of  old  William 
and  Mary  College,  and  its  conservative  friends ;  rival 
constituencies,  jealous  of  the  favour  which  had  exalted 
Albemarle  County  to  such  preference ;  and,  not  least 
of  all,  that  favourite  policy  which  disperses  all  boun 
ties  of  a  commonwealth  for  local  benefit  rather  than 
combine  them  for  one  great  result,  —  "  the  worst  of 
all  enemies,"  as  a  recent  writer  has  remarked,  "  to  the 
idea  of  State  universities."  By  selecting  Dr.  Cooper, 
the  Unitarian  Priestley's  friend,  for  a  professional  chair, 
Jefferson  so  offended  the  prepossessions  of  many  whose 
good-will  was  essential  that  the  obnoxious  arrange 
ment  had  to  be  cancelled ;  and  even  then  his  adver 
saries  claimed  strenuously  that  the  intention  was  to 
make  this  new  institution  a  bulwark  of  infidelity. 

The  triumph  over  formidable  opposition  here  upon 
the  soil  of  the  Old  Dominion  in  what  Cabell  once 
called  the  "  holy  cause  of  the  University,"  and  the  first 


238  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

triumph  of  the  kind,  makes  university  training  the 
desirable  capstone  of  popular  education  for  every 
State.  Those  prosperous  commonwealths  of  the  Mis 
sissippi  Valley,  reared  upon  Virginia's  northwestern 
territorial  cession,  and  endowed  severally  upon  their 
admission  to  the  Union  from  the  public  lands,  owe 
other  debts  of  their  own  to  Jefferson's  foresight  and 
philanthropy.  And  in  his  own  reluctant  State,  with 
plans  for  rearing  the  youth  too  comprehensive  to  be 
realized  in  his  own  generation,  Jefferson  gave,  what 
few  have  ever  afforded,  the  fervour  and  energy  of  old 
age.  "  A  system  of  general  instruction,"  he  wrote  in 
1818,  "which  shall  reach  every  description  of  our 
citizens,  from  the  richest  to  the  poorest,  as  it  was  the 
earliest,  so  will  it  be  the  latest,  of  all  the  public 
concerns  in  which  I  shall  permit  myself  to  take  an 
interest." 

The  first  rector  of  the  University  of  Virginia  lived 
long  enough  to  see  the  institution  opened  in  the 
spring  of  1825,  with  a  fair  roll  of  students  for  matri 
culation  and  a  corps  of  able  professors,  most  of  whom 
he  imported  from  Europe,  recognizing  that  in  the 
world  of  letters  a  young  Republic  must  not  be  self- 
sufficient.  Vicissitudes  shared  by  Virginia  herself 
have  kept  this  institution,  perhaps,  from  making  its 
impression  felt  throughout  the  Union ;  but  the  oldest 
and  richest  of  America's  institutions  have  in  later 
times  enlarged,  one  after  another,  their  sphere  of 
activities  upon  a  similar  model.  All  the  strong  ideas 


FOUNDER   OF  A    UNIVERSITY.  239 

which  Jefferson's  university  put  in  force  for  the  first 
time  upon  American  soil,  remain  to  this  day  as  the 
founder  fixed  them,  —  the  distinct  schools  in  which 
one  may  specialize  his  knowledge ;  the  substitution  of 
electives  for  the  routine  of  a  curriculum  •  the  honour 
system  of  discipline  among  students,  which  sets  them 
to  influencing  one  another  and  makes  a  law  of  liberty ; 
and  finally,  an  even  balance  between  all  religious  and 
political  sects  and  parties.  In  matters  of  the  higher 
education  Jefferson  as  a  close  student  of  comparative 
systems  and  an  adapter  to  the  American  age  was 
much  farther  in  advance  of  his  times  than  in  politics ; 
and  hence  his  fame  in  that  respect  has  come  less 
rapidly,  but  it  will  come  at  last.1 

1  See  more  fully  on  this  subject  Dr.  Herbert  B.  Adams's 
excellent  monograph  on  "  Thomas  Jefferson  and  the  University 
of  Virginia." 


240  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 


CHAPTER   XIV. 

CONCLUSION. 
JULY  4,  1826. 

No  one  ever  bestowed  more  generously  the  coinage 
of  his  brain  than  Thomas  Jefferson.  Whether  in 
science,  politics,  or  education,  he  claimed  no  monop 
oly,  no  royalty  for  himself.  Except  for  that  brief 
period  at  the  bar  before  public  interests  engrossed  his 
attention,  every  product  of  his  genius  went  into  the 
vast  reservoir  of  human  knowledge  freely  and  forever 
dedicated  to  the  good  of  the  human  race.  With  the 
periodical  income  of  his  farm  or  his  office  he  was 
scarcely  less  liberal.  We  have  seen  him  at  the  outset 
of  his  married  life  methodical  and  calculating  as  to 
his  private  revenues ;  but  long  public  service,  with 
its  vaster  concerns,  is  apt  to  weaken  insensibly,  on  the 
one  hand,  the  fibre  of  personal  thrift  and  alacrity; 
while,  on  the  other,  as  though  to  double  the  difficulty 
of  economizing,  fame  and  high  station  bring  the  strain 
of  lavish  entertainment. 

Land  ownership  in  Virginia  tended  in  these  times 
to  impoverishment,  under  the  faults  of  her  social  sys 
tem,  and  the  crushing  exhaustion  of  two  wars.  The 
incumbrance  of  British  debts  on  his  wife's  acquisition, 
and  the  paper  depreciation  of  our  Revolution  swept 


CONCLUSION.  241 

away  in  pecuniary  sacrifice  nearly  half  of  Jefferson's 
estate.  Embargo,  non-intercourse,  and  the  War  of 
1812  created  a  new  oppression,  with  monetary  revul 
sions,  and  a  ruined  market  for  crops.  His  unswerving 
constancy  to  the  cause  of  American  independence 
cost  him  heavily.  Always  disposed,  moreover,  while 
in  the  service  of  the  United  States,  to  spend  in 
politics  and  hospitality  the  whole  net  income  from 
his  lands,  and  every  dollar  of  his  official  salary, 
Jefferson  left  the  Presidency  owing  a  debt  most  of 
which  was  incurred  during  his  last  two  embarrassing 
years.  Prudence  and  privacy  of  living,  upon  his 
retirement,  might  soon,  under  ordinary  straits,  have 
restored  the  equilibrium  of  his  resources ;  but  to  add 
to  the  maelstrom  of  European  commotions  into  which 
neutral  America  was  gradually  drawn,  Jefferson's 
unique  and  conspicuous  position  left  him  no  real 
retirement  for  the  remainder  of  his  life.  Years  after 
he  had  left  official  station,  Monticello  was  overrun 
with  pilgrims,  from  the  illustrious  to  the  impertinent ; 
and  in  his  kindly  efforts  to  meet  this  constant  influx 
of  guests  and  gazers  with  a  style  of  entertainment 
becoming  the  friend  of  the  people,  his  debt  grew 
instead  of  diminishing,  since  government  had  ceased 
contributing  to  his  income.  And  finally,  as  though  to 
give  the  coup-de-grdce  to  his  pecuniary  misfortunes, 
Jefferson  indorsed  heavily  for  a  personal  friend, 
whose  sense  of  honour  was  greater  than  his  abilities ; 
and  in  that  friend's  failure  he  became  hopelessly 
embarrassed. 

16 


242  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

Humiliation  and  sorrow  might  have  clouded  these 
last  years  of  his  prolonged  life,  through  which,  never 
theless,  he  was  working  out  his  greatest  problems  of 
public  education ;  but  now  from  all  parts  of  the  Union 
came  proffers  of  assistance,  and  a  popular  subscrip 
tion  relieved  the  old  man  from  immediate  distress,  so 
that  he  closed  his  eyes  upon  the  world  in  peace  and 
gratitude.  Such  filial  assistance  has  not  since  been 
unknown  in  patriotic  instances ;  and  no  tribute  from  a 
Republic  can  be  more  appropriate  than  these  untaxed 
offerings  of  the  conscience,  —  the  tithe  which  the 
prosperous  yield  spontaneously  to  the  authors  of  their 
prosperity.  And  yet  a  delusion  is  apt  to  attend  such 
contributions,  for  the  strong  impulse  lasts  only  while 
the  gaze  is  fixed  in  one  direction. 

Happily  for  Jefferson  he  died  while  the  movement 
on  his  personal  behalf  was  fresh;  and  his  death, 
which  came  after  a  very  brief  illness,  was  gentle  and 
tranquil.  The  sun  of  a  long  life  sank  serenely,  and 
his  farewell  to  the  world  was  formulated  in  an  affec 
tionate  good-night  to  the  family  which  clustered  by 
his  bedside ;  then  on  the  morning  of  the  4th  of  July, 
1826,  he  passed  like  a  child  into  eternity,  uncon 
scious,  as  it  seemed,  of  what  that  anniversary  owed 
him.  What  a  memorable  celebration  of  American 
independence  !  Hundreds  of  miles  distant,  his  old 
comrade  of  the  Revolution,  John  Adams,  passed  away 
before  that  anniversary  sun  had  set ;  recalling  in 
his  own  last  conscious  articulation  the  occasion  and 
the  companionship.  It  was  one  of  those  rare  coinci- 


CONCLUSION".  243 

dences  which  history  lends  to  eloquence  and  immortal 
remembrance. 

Before  he  died,  Jefferson  drew  a  rough  sketch  of 
his  own  monument  as  he  wished  it  placed  in  his 
cemetery  lot.  It  was  a  simple  obelisk,  and  bore 
this  epitaph  for  an  inscription :  "  Here  was  buried 
Thomas  Jefferson,  author  of  the  declaration  of  Amer 
ican  independence,  of  the  Statute  of  Virginia  for 
religious  freedom,  and  father  of  the  University  of 
Virginia."  His  wishes  were  sacredly  followed.  In 
this  last  and  most  solemn  appeal  for  fame  and  recog 
nition  we  may  perceive  that  Jefferson's  most  enduring 
pride  was  not  in  party  triumphs,  nor  in  honours  of 
public  station,  nor  even  in  that  supreme  of  our  politi 
cal  titles,  President  of  the  United  States,  but  in  the 
calmer  authorship  of  great  works  for  the  general 
benefit  of  posterity  and  his  fellow-men. 

Jefferson  remains  a  creative  force  in  American  life, 
—  a  maker  of  America.  As  to  his  political  philoso 
phy,  the  test  may  now  be  compressed  into  a  hypothesis. 
"If  Jefferson  was  wrong,"  it  has  been  well  observed,1 
"  America  is  wrong ;  if  America  is  right,  Jefferson 
was  right."  For  his  intuitions  and  his  teachings  were 
those  of  the  nineteenth  century;  and  in  the  nine 
teenth  century's  experiment  with  Democracy,  which 
has  thus  far  been  carried  forward  so  splendidly,  must 
lie  his  vindication  or  his  doom.  For  while  the  most 

1  James  Parton's  Life  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  preface. 


244  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

distinguished  contemporaries  of  his  age  were  for 
repressing  popular  tendencies,  he  led  in  giving  them 
free  and  confident  scope. 

Jefferson's  faults  of  character,  which  first  became 
manifested  after  his  French  experience,  —  dissimu 
lation,  intrigue,  adroit  management,  a  certain  art  of 
drawing  the  chair  from  under  a  foe  instead  of  striking 
him  down,  "a  knack  of  shunning  danger,"  as  enemies 
expressed  it,  and  a  disposition  to  exonerate  himself 
from  blame  under  all  circumstances,  and  even  though 
employing  others  to  detract,  may  be  detected  in  acts 
of  his  later  career  while  the  responsible  chief  and 
organizer  of  the  Republican  party  and  immersed  in 
political  strife.  In  political  methods  and  temperament 
he  grew  to  be  more  of  the  French  than  of  the  English 
school,  —  plausible  and  diplomatic  rather  than  curt 
and  offensive ;  just  as  at  his  table  his  palate  became 
partial  to  delicate  French  viands  and  cookery.  But  while 
in  responsible  authority,  Jefferson  threw  his  meaner 
weapons  aside.  He  was  sound  in  his  native  faith ;  sin 
cere  and  attached  to  all  followers ;  remarkably  tolerant 
except  toward  such  as  had  provoked  his  revenge,  and 
those  he  spared  not  on  opportunity.  His  innermost 
wish  was  to  be  friendly  with  the  great  majority,  friend 
of  the  people  ;  and  the  love  of  popularity  disposed  him 
in  public  conduct  to  temporize.  He  was  an  idealist, 
but  enough  of  a  statesman  besides  to  understand  that 
mankind  are  more  won  by  facts  than  theories.  In 
general  direction  he  never  swerved ;  he  led  by  flight, 
drawing  the  multitude  after  him,  not  soaring  as  the  lark 


CONCLUSION.  245 

above  them.  To  such  a  statesman  the  best  attain 
able  for  the  times  is  the  best ;  he  errs  with  his  age, 
but  he  advances  it. 

Much  of  Jefferson's  remarkable  influence  was  due 
to  his  attractive  style  as  a  writer.  Phrases  from  his 
letters  and  public  documents,  sometimes  fervent, 
sometimes  humorous,  circulated  through  the  land  like 
silver  coin.  He  wrote  and  he  talked  with  warm 
blood  coursing  through  his  veins;  and  though  the 
shaft  might  rankle  where  it  was  driven,  it  struck 
the  mark.  Vigour,  liveliness,  and  choice  felicity  of 
expression  marked  his  style,  which  was  nevertheless 
scholarly ;  and  while  so  many  of  his  age  modelled 
their  style  upon  Addison  and  the  "  Spectator,"  sought 
out  the  sonorous  and  balanced  their  periods  labori 
ously,  admitting  no  word  that  might  not  be  found  in 
Johnson's  dictionary,  he  preferred  rather  the  figurative, 
and  aimed  to  make  the  English  vocabulary  more 
copious.  His  style,  like  that  of  every  master,  was  an 
image  of  himself,  and  adaptive  he  meant  it  to  be  to 
the  current  American  age  and  institutions. 

Jefferson's  original  character,  in  short,  has  most 
powerfully  contributed  in  forming  that  of  his  country. 
Liberal  education,  liberal  politics,  liberal  religion ;  a 
free  press;  America  for  Americans;  faith  in  the  1( 
simple  arts  of  peace,  in  science,  in  material  progress, 
in  popular  rule,  in  honesty,  in  government  economies ; 
no  kings,  no  caste,  room  for  the  oppressed  of  all 
climes ;  hostility  to  monopolies,  the  divorce  of  gov-  r 


246  THOMAS  JEFFERSON. 

ernment  from  banks,  from  pet  corporations,  and  from 
every  form  of  paternalism ;  foreign  friendship  and 
intercourse  without  foreign  alliances ;  the  gradual 
propagation  of  republican  ideas  on  this  Western 
hemisphere  while  gently  forcing  Europe  out ;  meagre 
force  establishments,  meagre  preparations  for  war  in 
time  of  peace,  a  leaning  toward  militia  and  State 
volunteers  for  defence  in  emergencies  rather  than 
dependence  upon  national  troops  and  praetorian 
guards  ;  faith  in  the  indefinite  expansion  of  this  Union, 
and  of  the  practice  of  self-government  upon  this  con 
tinent,  to  the  ultimate  exclusion  of  crowns  and  mon- 
archs :  all  this,  though  others  inculcated  some  of 
these  maxims  too,  is  Jeffersonism,  —  for  Jefferson's 
inspiration  propagated  the  faith,  —  and  Jeffersonism 
is  modern  America. 

Jefferson  was  wont  to  observe  that  the  people  afford 
the  safest  repository  of  power  in  a  government  like 
ours,  because  the  most  honest,  though  at  the  same 
time  not  always  the  wisest.  In  that  qualification  we 
may  trace  the  fibre  of  his  statesmanship.  Dema 
gogues  he  detested,  as  must  every  man  of  honour. 
He  did  not  solicit  the  great  host  of  inexperience  to 
find  ideas  and  opinions  for  him ;  he  did  not  flatter 
ignorance,  nor  pander  to  passions,  nor  lead  as  though 
the  rule  for  public  leadership  were  to  study  symptoms 
and  catch  the  latest  infection ;  but  like  one  who  felt 
his  own  talents  and  attainments  to  be  above  the  aver 
age,  he  gave  the  best  of  his  ability  to  the  good  of  the 
people,  and  led  as  one  responsible  wherever  he  was 


CONCLUSION.  247 

trusted  to  lead  at  all.  Acknowledging  public  opinion 
as  the  true  fountain-head  of  authority,  he  neither 
fought  it  stubbornly,  nor  bent  in  base  subservience ; 
but  confident  that  the  impulses  of  the  people  were 
right  impulses,  and  patient  of  their  temporary  errors 
as  of  his  own,  he  strove  to  advance  permanently  their 
true  interests.  Such  self-respecting  statesmanship 
alone  can  win  in  a  republic  of  hearts  the  meed  of 
lasting  gratitude. 


APPENDIX. 

PAGE  73.  In  Dr.  Charles  J.  Stilte's  Life  of  John  Dick 
inson,  p.  161  (published  1891),  it  is  claimed,  and  not 
without  some  reason,  that  the  latter  was  the  author  of 
all  and  every  portion  of  this  famous  document,  over 
which  no  controversy,  however,  had  arisen  while  Dick 
inson  was  alive.  Upon  the  facsimile  of  a  draft  presumed 
to  be  in  his  handwriting,  which  contains  various  altera 
tions,  this  posthumous  assertion  is  confidently  made 
against  Jefferson's  positive  statement  to  the  contrary  in 
his  own  memoir,  and  against  various  inherent  indications  * 
of  a  divided  committee  authorship.  But  no  draft,  unsup 
ported  by  the  composer's  pertinent  comment,  ought  to  be 
conclusive  proof  that  parts  were  not  inspired  from  some 
external  source ;  and  while  Dickinson's  biographer  is 
fairly  justified  in  claiming  all  disputed  honors  for  that 
illustrious  statesman,  a  like  fidelity  may  well  be  allowed 
to  the  biographers  of  Jefferson,  all  of  whom  have  succes 
sively  taken  him  at  his  solemn  word  on  this  point. 


INDEX. 


ADAMS,  John,  72,  78,  84,  87,  134, 
139,  141,  151,  179,  184,  189,  197, 

210,  212,  228,  230,  242. 

Adams,  John  Quincy,  197. 
Adams,  Samuel,  73,  88. 
Administration,  198-220. 
Albemarle  Academy,  233. 
Albemarle  County,  8,  21,   51,  no, 

237. 

Alien  Act,  192. 
Anas,  165. 

Appearance,  personal,  24,  38. 
Appointments,  201,  202. 

BANK,  United  States,  159,  221. 
Barbary  Powers,  138,  213. 
Birth,  15. 
Boston,  63, 133. 
Botetourt,  Lord,  52,  54,  63. 
Breckenridge,  John,  193. 
Burgesses  (see   Virginia),  44,  51- 

54,  64,  92. 
Burial,  243. 
Burke,  Edmund,  65. 
Burr,  Aaron,  195-197,  212,  222. 
Burwell,  Rebecca,  37. 

CABELL,  Joseph  C.,  237. 
Carr,  Dabney,  39,  62. 
Character,  243-247. 
Charlottesville,  7-10,  117,  234. 
Chesapeake  affair,  218. 


Code  of  Virginia,  94-98. 
College  (see  Education),  27-31,  233. 
Commerce,  report  on,  174. 
Confederation,  articles  of,  86. 
Congress  (Continental),  69,  71-89, 

122-133, 181. 

Congress  (Confederate),  126-132. 
Congress  (Constitutional),  154,158, 

166,  173,  190. 
Constitution,  British,  164. 
Constitution  of  United  States,  156, 

157,  163, 194. 

Convention  (1774)*  67  5  (i775>,  69. 
Cooper,  Thomas,  237. 
Cornwallis,  Lord,  no,  118. 
Correspondence,  Committees  of,  62. 
Courts,  United  States,  201-203, 220- 

223. 

DANE,  Nathan,  131. 

Dearborn,  Henry,  205. 

Death,  242. 

Debts,  241,242. 

Declaration  of  Independence,  63,  65, 

78-86,  243. 
Democracy,    American,      159,    177, 

212,  243. 

Dickinson,  John,  73. 
Diplomacy,  136. 
Doctor  of  Laws,  140. 
Dollar,  American,  126. 
Douglass,  Rev.  Mr.,  25. 
Dunmore,  Lord,  63,  70. 


25° 


INDEX. 


EDUCATION  (see  University,  Wil 
liam  and  Mary  College),  26,  102, 
121,  231-233,  238. 

Elk  Hill,  118. 

Embargo,  219,  224. 

Entails,  93. 

Epitaph,  243. 

Eppes,  John  W.,  190. 

Expatriation,  66,  93. 

FAUQUIER,  Governor,  28-30. 
Federalists,  157,  159,  163,  190,  195, 

200. 

Founder,  224-239. 

France,  109, 133-152, 169,  172,  187- 

191,  213,  224,  244. 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  72,  78,  88, 133, 

i35>i54. 
Freneau,  Philip,  166. 

GALLATIN,  Albert,  205,  216. 

Gaspee,  The,  61. 

Gates,  General,  113. 

Genealogy,  16. 

Genet,  Minister,  172,  177. 

George  III.  (see  Great  Britain),  66, 

80,  141. 

Gerry,  Elbridge,  45,  127. 
Great  Britain,  42,  53,  58,  61,  63,  66, 

80,  86,  113, 141,  171, 181, 189,  212, 

218,  224,  240,  241. 

HAMILTON,  Alexander,   156,    158- 

163,  ?75'  '79.  183,  196. 
Hancock,  John,  78,  87. 
Henry,  Patrick,   37,  42-44,  46,  50, 

53,  62,  67,  92,108,  179,  209. 
Houdon,  140. 

INDIANS,  216. 

JACKSON,  Andrew,  226. 
Jay,  John,  72,  181. 


Jefferson,  Jane,  39 

Jefferson,  Maria,  6-9,  146,  148,  190, 
230. 

Jefferson,  Martha,  60,  146, 148, 154. 

Jefferson,  Peter,  16-22. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  birth  (April  2, 
1743),  *5 »  parentage  and  early 
childhood  (1743-1757),  16-22  ; 
genealogy,  16-18;  education 
(1757-1765),  early,  23-26  ;  at  col 
lege,  27-31  ;  legal  studies,  32,  42  ; 
youthful  diversions,  36 ;  profes 
sional  career  (1766-1774),  46-51, 
59;  in  House  of  Burgesses,  51-54  ; 
marriage  and  children,  56-60 ; 
House  of  Burgesses  and  Revolu 
tion  (1773-1775),  61-70  ;  Conti 
nental  Congress  and  Declaration 
of  Independence (1775-1776),  71- 
89;  Virginia  codifier  and  re 
former  (1776-1779),  90-106* 
Governor  of  Virginia  (1779- 1791), 
107-121  ;  in  seclusion,  122  ;  death 
of  wife,  125  ;  Notes  on  Virginia, 
123,  134,  145  ;  re-enters  Congress 
(1783,  1784),  124,  132;  Minister 
to  France  (1784-1789),  133-152 J 
Secretary  of  State  (1790-1794), 
153-176;  party  leader  and  Vice- 
President  (1794-1801),  177-197; 
Republican  President  (1801- 
1809),  198-220;  controversy  with 
John  Marshall,  220-223  ;  in  retire 
ment  (1809-1826),  224-230; foun 
der  of  a  University  (rSi6-i826), 
230-239  ;  last  years  of  misfortune, 
240-242;  death  (July  4,  1826), 
242 ;  burial  and  epitaph,  243 ; 
personal  appearance,  24,  38 ;  tastes, 
habits,  and  attainments,  24,  30-32, 
38-41,49,  57,  207-210,  212  ;  do 
mestic  life,  39,  56-60,  106,  125, 
145,  240-243 ;  religious  views, 
100,  143,  229,  230;  educational 


INDEX. 


25 1 


views,  231-233  ;  summary  of  char 
acter,  243-247. 

KENTUCKY,  192. 
King,  Rufus,  131. 
Knox,  Henry,  175. 

LAFAYETTE,  137,  149. 

Lee,   Richard  H.,    53,  62,  69,  78, 

140. 

Locke,  John,  85. 
Louis  XVI.,  149,  169,  170,  172. 
Louisiana,  213. 

MADISON,  James,  35,  92,  97,   123, 

140,153,  156,165,179,  192,  205, 

224-227,  233. 

Manual,  Parliamentary,  190. 
Marshall,  John,  189,  197,  201,  220- 

223. 

Mason,  George,  63,  92,  103. 
Massachusetts,  62,  63-65,  72. 
Maury,  James,  26. 
Mazzei,  letter,  182. 
Mecklenburg,  86. 
Message,  210. 
Minister,  133. 
Monroe,  James,  123,   140,  179,  225- 

228,  233. 

Monroe  doctrine,  227,  228. 
Monticello,  ro,  35,  39,  55,  117,  i5r> 

153,  1  66,  178,  236,  241. 
Morris,  Gouverneur,  127,  163. 


NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE,  169,  212, 

213,  218,  225. 
Naturalization  Act,  192. 
Navy,  213,  219. 
Nelson,  Thomas,  120. 
New  England,  231,  232. 
New  Jersey,  216. 
New  York  City,  45,  154. 
Nicholas,  George,  120. 


North,  Lord,  72,  75. 
Notes  on  Virginia,  104,   124,   134, 
145. 

ORDINANCE   OF   FREEDOM,   129- 

132. 
Otis,  James,  85. 

PAGE,  John,  37,  107. 
Paine,  Thomas,  77,  103,  229. 
Paris  (see  France),  133,  141,  144, 

147. 

Parliament  (see  Great  Britain). 
Pendleton,  Edmund,  94. 
Philadelphia,  45,  71,  156,  173,  190. 
Pickering,  Timothy,  188. 
President,  195-197,  198-223. 
Priestley,  Joseph,  230,  237. 
Primogeniture,  93. 

QUINCY,  Josiah,  39. 

RANDOLPH,  Ben,  71. 
Randolph,  Edmund,  46,  175,  178. 
Randolph,  Jane,  16,  17,  24,  77. 
Randolph,  John,  203,  212. 
Randolph,  Peyton,   53,  63,  65,  69, 

78. 

Randolph,  Thomas  M.,  20,  154. 
Randolph,  William,  19. 
Religion,  100,  143,  229,  230,  243. 
Republicans,  177,  199,  201. 
Resolutions,  Virginia  and  Kentucky, 

190-194. 

Retirement,  224-239.      ^  >s. 
Retrenchment,  203,  215. 
Revolution,   French   (see  France), 

148-152. 

Richmond,  68,  112,  115. 
Rivanna,  14,  18,  38. 

SCHOOLS,    common     (see    Educa 
tion). 
Science,  136. 


252 


INDEX. 


Secretary  of  State,  153-176. 
Sedition  Act,  192. 
Shadwell,  14,  19,  25,  34,  54. 
Shays  insurrection,  155. 
Shippen,  Dr.,  45. 
Skelton,  Martha,  56,   113,  12- 


125, 


Slavery,    58,   80,  83,   103-105,   in, 
•*    130-132,  216,  227. 
Small,  William,  29. 
Snowdon,  17,  25. 
Stamp  Act  (see  Great  Britain),  42, 

53- 

Staunton,  115,  118. 
Summary  View,  65,  85. 

TALLEYRAND,  188,  191. 
Territories  of  Union,  128. 
Titles,  158. 

Township  government,  232. 
Treason,  93,  222. 
Tuckahoe,  120,  154.^ 


UNIVERSITY  OF  VIRGINIA,  233- 
239- 

VERGENNES,  134. 

Vice-President,  177-197. 

Virginia  (see  University),  8,  44,  51- 
54,  58,  63,  7°,  72,  86,  90,  93-98, 
104,  no,  120,  124,  134,  145,  192, 
227,  231,  233,  240,  241,  243. 

WASHINGTON  CITY,  195,  198. 
Washington,  George,  53,  54,  67,  73, 

76,  89,   127,  153,  157,   167,  168, 

172,  174,  180,  183,  210. 
Wayles,  John,  57. 
White  House,  207. 
William  and  Mary  College,   26-31, 

121,  140,  232. 

Williamsburg,  27,  43,  112,  121. 
Wythe,  George,  30,  33,  68,  92,  94, 

103,  140. 


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